It was amazing what a bath could do for a person.  After a long soak to relax his muscles, which then carried on just because it was so blissfully comfortable, Kyungsoo went to join Tao and Jongin in Tao’s study.

The Chinese man was doing very well for himself, and Kyungsoo had to say that he would never have guessed it from his knowledge of Tao at university.  The melodramatic teenage Disney-lover had evolved into somebody who knew what it was to shut up, and his film collection had expanded to include a number of classics from the Western world.  He’d also learnt how to cook (Kyungsoo remembered something about him cribbing off his fellow flatmates when he’d been in Korea) and from the photos around his apartment in the centre of Beijing, it looked very much like he’d also found himself a gorgeous girlfriend.  She had a ring on her finger in what looked to be the most recent picture, but since Tao’s home still very much had the air of a bachelor pad, Kyungsoo deduced that they were likely engaged rather than married.

The car journey from Shanghai had taken two days, and while Kyungsoo and Jongin had both slept for most of it due to the exhaustion from the stress and long hours hiding in Mighty Mouth’s base, there had still been ample time for Jongin to explain to Tao what was going on.  Now that Tao had had a chance to digest what was going on, he was attempting to help Jongin with a plan of action.

Or had been, until the boxes of contraband Jongin had put together arrived.  Kyungsoo entered Tao’s study just as Jongin was opening the last of the boxes and found Tao sitting weakly in his office chair, looking a little out of it.

“This is going to be a very big operation,” Tao said as Jongin sat back on his heels.

“Yup,” agreed Jongin.  “A heck of a lot bigger than my superior thought it would be, and too big to send in much more backup from America because our two countries aren’t exactly on… well, friendly terms.”

“Quite,” murmured Tao.  Kyungsoo sidled over to the desk and leant against it.  Jongin and Tao were talking in Korean, presumably so he could understand (Jongin’s Mandarin was fluent, after all), but this particular topic wasn’t technically to do with him, so he felt he had no place to in.

“I’ve sent a duplicate lot of these to the head police office in Shanghai,” Jongin went on, “but I don’t know if they’re being paid off, which is why I had these brought here too.”

“That and you’ve sabotaged their building.”  Tao nodded to himself.  “Well, they’ll be on the back foot, but didn’t you say their main focus is currently over in Korea?”

“Exactly.  If you strike while Sangchu is occupied in Korea, you could mop up a fair amount of the organisation and he’d be fighting a war on two fronts.  If he feels pressurised into moving quickly, then he’ll make mistakes.  Basic psychological warfare.”

Tao nodded again.  “We’ll need time to prepare.  He’ll have multiple bases.”

Jongin grimaced.  “Time’s the one thing we don’t really have.”

Kyungsoo raised a hand.  “Surely if you manage to catch one or two of his men if you raid the main base, you’ll be able to get information?  He must have left somebody important in his HQ if he went to Korea himself.”

“That’s the plan we’ll have to go for,” Jongin consented.  Tao hummed in response.

“It’ll depend on the Shanghai police department, but I can pull in favours and twist a few arms to do something in about seven days.  Possibly five.  The evidence you’ve given me is substantial enough for me to get the defence minister to approve a warrant, but we can’t do anything without some preparation and that’ll take a little while to sort out.”

“A week is fine.”  Jongin nodded decisively.  “Preferably not longer.  My agents who are still here will be briefed to help you when necessary – they should be useful during the planning stage, at least.”

“I’ll get started as soon as you’ve gone to the embassies, then.”  Tao smiled weakly.  “And I’d best call some forensics in to look at these too, hadn’t I?”

The embassy trip was long and dull.  Jongin’s idea was to get back over to South Korea as fast as possible, which naturally meant they would need passports which neither of them had.  Jongin being a naturalised US citizen meant that he had to find the American embassy while Kyungsoo waited in the South Korean one, and it made him despair of bureaucracy.

He normally despaired of bureaucracy anyway, but when he looked to be the only expat in the building who needed some kind of help and it took five and a half hours before a secretary came to deal with him, he wondered why taxpayer money was going towards embassies like this.  Jongin gatec