Page 99 of K-Pop Double Life

I filed that away. Sang-hoon’s observational skills had saved Jin’s life. “When was your last contact with Sara Yoon?”

“Two hours before the show. Confirmation that I was in position, that the payment was ready.”

“And since then?”

“Nothing. The second the job failed, she went dark. That’s standard protocol. If an asset is compromised, you cut them loose immediately.”

“So she knows we caught you.”

“She knows by now, yes. Which means she’s already repositioned, already activated a backup plan.” Mueller met my eyes. “You’re not going to stop her. She’s too careful, too well-funded. She’ll keep trying until either she succeeds or runs out of money.”

“How many other assets does she have?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t know there were other assets until I researched what had been happening on the tour. But based on the operation’s sophistication? At least three or four others, probably more.”

Liam pulled up a photo on his tablet. “Sophie Tran. Do you know her?”

Mueller studied the image. “No. But that doesn’t mean anything. These kind of operations always use isolated cells.”

“What about these two?” He showed her photos of the fireworks technician from Cannes, the makeup assistant from Paris, even the girl from the dinner in New York.

“Never seen them.”

I believed her. Sara Yoon was running this like an intelligence operation. Compartmentalized, need-to-know basis, minimal overlap between assets. Smart. And frustrating.

“Tell me about the encryption,” I said. “How did she communicate with you?”

“Signal app, but not the standard one. Custom build with additional encryption layers. Messages auto-deleted after reading. Payments through cryptocurrency, routed through multiple wallets to obscure the trail.”

“Can you access the account now?”

“No. The app was on my phone, which you confiscated. And even if you crack it, she’s probably already changed the encryption keys.”

Liam and I exchanged a look. He’d been working with Richard to break Mueller’s phone encryption for the past six hours with limited success.

“What about her location? Did she ever reference where she was operating from?”

“Never directly. But...” Mueller hesitated. “The message timestamps. They varied—sometimes she’d respond immediately, sometimes hours would pass. Like she was moving between time zones.”

“Which ones?”

“Started in Asian time zone. Korea, probably. Then European. Then back to Asian.” She paused. “The last message, two hours before the show, came at a time that would have been early morning in Korea.”

Seoul. She was going back to Seoul.

“One more question,” I said. “Why did you take this job? Ten thousand euros is good money, but not worth twenty years in prison.”

Mueller’s face hardened. “I needed the money. And she said the security was good but predictable. That it would be quick, clean, low risk.” She looked up at me. “I was wrong.”

Liam and I sat in our room at the Tivoli Mofarrej, laptops open, piecing together what we’d learned. Richard was on video call from wherever he was. I’d stopped asking years ago.

“Mueller’s phone is a fortress,” Richard said, his face pixelated on the screen. “Custom encryption, auto-delete protocols, routing through VPN layers that would make the CIA jealous. I can crack it, but it’ll take days, maybe weeks.”

“We don’t have weeks,” I said. “We have four days until the Seoul show.”

“Then we work with what we know.” Liam pulled up a timeline. “Sara Yoon started in Seoul, traveled to Europe during Cannes and Paris, possibly came to New York, definitely followed us to São Paulo based on Mueller’s timestamp analysis. Now she’s heading back to Seoul for the finale.”

“Makes sense,” Richard said. “Seoul’s her home ground. She knows the city, knows the venue, has local resources and connections we don’t have access to.”