Inside the log cabin, Chaerin tends to boiling pots. She’s cooking a feast. Soon their father and Seungri enters, stamping their feet shedding ice at the door. Her father walks by the box and sees the little red light flickering. Chaerin sees this and sees him smile, but she knows he’s sad.

“We were lucky to grab that deer. There was nothing out there today.”

Her father looks over at the meal Chaerin is about to prepare. He dips his finger into the pot scalding himself. “Ouch.”

“It’s hot.” He smiles at her. One of the few he’s shown her. “I’m really hungry. And it smells so good. Is it almost ready?” He wraps an arm around her shoulder and looks into the pot. They don’t hug much and it shows. But Chaerin not going to let go first. She leans into his heavy coat, briefly, and takes a deep breath. The smell from that giant coat. It wraps her all up and makes her feel like nothing in the whole wide world could ever hurt her.

****

Somewhere in one room, full of monitor, a woman, red hair, tall, wearing a sharp business suit, walks down a set of stairs with her ‘TECH ONE’.

“We’ve picked up an unencrypted signal, one of ours. We think it’s Erik Heinrich.”

She’s not surprised or at least she doesn’t show it. “When?”

“This morning”. A man hands her a coffee and she hands him some files.

“You were his handler, right?” He asked her.

“Sure. Erik Heinrich. Recruited in 1991. The name sounds familiar.” But the name is more than familiar.

******

Chaerin is watching her father leaning over a pail of water, cutting his beard off with a knife. Chaerin sits at a table utterly fascinated by her father’s transforming appearance. Her father is now clean shaven. Chaerin saws off chunks of his long hair. She saws one area too close to his head, creating a very uneven divot. His whole head of hair is full of uneven divots.

“How does it look?” She steps back, sizes him up. Her eyes widen and a smile cracks.

“Good.”

“Good?”

“Almost good.”

******

Suspended from the ceiling are a number of screens showing a feed to the Asia HQ where a young agent, Isaac, is in attendance. He read a newspaper article in front of him, the headline: POLICE HUNT FOR MURDER SUSPECT. A picture of a Young Erik in the article beside another picture of the burnt out carcass of a car tilted at an odd angle against a tree. There also another photo of a woman. She’s the woman from Chaerin’s family photo booth pictures.

There are a one German man, very tall, blue eyes, sharp jaw-line and the other one is Asian man, brown eyes, 4 cm short from the German man known as WALT and GEUM, the head of the agency, sit at a wide table hearing a briefing from the woman. The woman known as Mina Wiegler, an operative agent of the Intelligence Agency.

“Johanna Heinrich”. Born 1970. German. Spotted and developed by Heinrich in 1994 but never recruited.”

“Why was she being developed?” Walt asked. Mina opens another file, reads.

“That’s not in the file. Let’s stay on task. Erik is a rogue asset. I propose we go in and pull him out.”

“Isn’t that an overreaction?”  the German guy asked again.

“No.”

“Give it to Interpol, for Christ’s sake. We have bigger problems, bigger fish, Mina, than some loon who went survivor man on us.” The Asian boss loops his opinion.

“Interpol nabs him and exposes him. Do you really want every intelligence agency scratching at this thread? It’s a very thick sweater. There’ll be enough yarn to hang us all.”

“Isaac?” Walt watching another agent sitting at the table.

“We need to keep this contained, gentlemen. Keep it small. I worked with this man, he knows things I don’t think you want to know” she continued to convincing them.

“Okay. I hear that.” The Asian boss said. She smiles, these guy’s are ing idiots. Walt leans back in his chair, thinks about the horrible things he knows and the horrible things he’s not supposed to know.

“Isaac?”

“One man. One day operation.”

The hall is empty. Mina leans against a wall, her head down, her breathing controlled.

“ Erik. Why now?”