[POINT OF VIEW: LEE JUNG-JAE - THIRD PERSON]
The last note of the saxophone still seemed to float in the air, a ghost of unexpected beauty. The atmosphere in the villa had undergone a seismic transformation. Fear had been replaced by disbelief, and disbelief was settling into a new, strange form of acceptance. Lee Jung-jae looked at Leo, who now treated the saxophone as if it were a newly discovered treasure, and realized they were dealing with a phenomenon that defied all categorization.
He was a man capable of describing mutilation with the coldness of a surgeon, and then playing a pop ballad with the soul of a tortured poet. He was a tactical genius who could fall into a pool because of a chair. He was, in essence, the personification of ordered chaos. And as exasperating as it was, there was something deeply magnetic about it.
The group, who had been on the verge of a collective nervous breakdown for days, seemed to have found a new dynamic. They had moved from fear to exasperation, and from exasperation to a kind of protective, resigned affection. They had inadvertently become the caretakers of a human hurricane.
The planning for the Thailand mission resumed, but the tone was different. Helena, though still the supreme commander, seemed to have slightly softened her edges. Wi Ha-joon no longer looked at Leo as an uncontrollable variable, but as a volatile asset that had to be understood to be utilized. And Jo Yu-ri... she observed Leo with an intensity that was a mix of everything: irritation, awe, concern, and a curiosity that was almost clinical. She was trying to piece together the most complicated puzzle she had ever seen.
After another hour of discussing fake identities and temple approach routes, Helena declared a recess. The sun was setting, painting the sky in shades of orange and purple. The energy in the room dissipated. And it was in that vacuum, in that pause, that chaos decided it had been quiet for too long.
[POINT OF VIEW: LEO - FIRST PERSON]
The music had left me in a state of glorious calm. The noise in my head had organized itself into a melody. I felt centered, almost... normal. And I hated that feeling. The calm after the creative storm is a void. It's the silence after the concert, and it's deafening. My brain, having solved the poem's riddle and found an outlet for its energy through the saxophone, was now bored. And a brain like mine, when bored, becomes dangerous.
I needed a new stimulus. A celebration. We had solved the riddle. We had survived North Korea (well, I had). We deserved a reward. My eyes drifted towards the bar in the corner. A beautiful piece of dark mahogany furniture, with a liquor collection that would make a collector cry with joy. I saw a bottle of single malt Scotch whisky, a 16-year-old Lagavulin, its amber liquid glowing in the dim light. Perfect. A toast to victories past and those yet to come.
With a new sense of purpose, I stood up and headed towards the bar, whistling a cheerful tune. I felt several gazes on me, but I ignored them. After all, I had been very good. I had solved their problem. I deserved a drink.
I was about to reach the bottle, my fingers inches from the cold glass, when a voice stopped me dead in my tracks.
"Don't even think about it, Leonidas."
Helena's voice. It wasn't loud, but it carried the weight of a glacier. I froze. Slowly, very slowly, I turned around.
She stood a few feet away, arms crossed. Her expression was unreadable, but her eyes were two shards of ice.
"Come on, Helena," I said, trying to sound casual, though a cold sweat began to form on the back of my neck. "Just a small glass. To celebrate. A toast to teamwork."
"Last time you celebrated 'teamwork' with a bottle of liquor in your hand," she said, her voice dropping to an icy whisper, "we had to evacuate an ambassador in a laundry cart, an avian quarantine was declared in an entire capital, and the high command forbade me from ever setting foot on the island of Cuba again."
Her gaze hardened. "We are not repeating Havana."
[POINT OF VIEW: GROUP - THIRD PERSON]
The mention of "Havana" made Leo's body react in a way no one had ever seen before. All his arrogance, all his energy, vanished in an instant. He cowered, like a dog that had just been hit with a rolled-up newspaper. His face paled.
"No," he whispered, his voice a thread. "Helena, no. You can't talk about that. The high command said that incident was classified. Sealed. Buried."
"The high command isn't here to clean up your mess this time," she retorted, taking a step towards him.
"Please!" he pleaded, and his voice was laden with a genuine panic that was completely new to them. "It was an accident. A series of unfortunate misunderstandings. And the parrot didn't have to bite the culture minister. It was a provocation on his part."
The strange and specific denial only served to ignite the group's curiosity.
"What happened in Havana?" Min-jun asked, unable to contain himself.
Leo shot him a panicked look. "Nothing! Nothing happened! A small diplomatic incident! Things happen!"
But Helena had other plans. She saw the curious faces around her. She saw an opportunity to impart a vital lesson. A lesson about why Leonidas and alcohol were a more dangerous combination than nitroglycerin and a bumpy road.
"Sit down," Helena told the group, her voice returning to her lecturing tone. "Since this man seems to have the selective memory of a goldfish, perhaps a small reminder will refresh his memory. And perhaps it will serve as a warning to you all."
Leo slumped onto the nearest sofa, burying his face in his hands with a groan. "Don't tell the full version. Please. Tell the watered-down version. The official report version."
Helena gave him a humorless smile. "Always so considerate. Very well. I will tell you the 'watered-down' version."
She sat facing them, lacing her fingertips together. "Two years ago. The mission was simple: retrieve a microfilm containing details about Helix's smuggling routes in the Caribbean. The microfilm was hidden in a custom cigar box that was to be delivered during a reception at the Spanish embassy in Havana. The plan was for Leo, under the identity of an eccentric Swiss millionaire, to intercept the messenger, swap the boxes, and leave. A five-minute operation. Clean. Silent."
She paused, looking at Leo, who shrank even further.
"The problem," she continued, "was that the messenger was delayed. And Leo, instead of waiting patiently as ordered, decided that waiting would be more pleasant with a little Cuban rum. One mojito. Then another. Then, apparently, he decided that seven-year-old aged rum was an excellent companion for philosophical debate."
"He got into an argument with the French cultural attaché about existentialism in Sartre's work. The discussion grew heated. To prove a point about 'radical freedom,' Leo decided to 'free' the ambassador's pet, a very rare and ill-tempered macaw named 'El General'."
Yu-ri clapped a hand over her mouth to stifle a nervous laugh.
"El General, in his newfound freedom, flew directly to the buffet table and landed on the head of the Cuban culture minister, whom he proceeded to bite repeatedly. This caused initial panic," Helena explained with clinical calm. "Leo, in an attempt to 'solve' the situation, tried to lure the bird using the reception's dessert as bait: a very elaborate tres leches cake. In doing so, he tripped over a waiter carrying a tray of champagne glasses, creating a chain reaction that ended with the tres leches cake landing on the Russian ambassador's wife."
"As chaos spread," she continued, her voice a deadly monotone, "Leo finally saw his target, the messenger with the cigar box. Instead of making the discreet exchange, he decided it was faster to simply grab the box and run. Which he did. Pursued by embassy security."
"To escape, he ran out onto the balcony and, seeing no exit, used the embassy's velvet curtains to slide down to a passing truck on the street. Unfortunately, it wasn't just any truck. It was the truck transporting fireworks for the Revolution Day celebration."
The silence in the room was now absolute.
"Upon his landing," Helena went on, "his weight and the impact caused several boxes of rockets to tip over and prematurely ignite from the truck's exhaust pipe heat. The truck, now an improvised and out-of-control multiple rocket launcher, sped down the Malecón, firing fireworks in all directions."
"One of those rockets veered off course and flew directly through an open window of the Grand Theater of Havana, where 'Swan Lake' was being performed. The rocket harmlessly exploded over the stage, but the explosion and shower of sparks caused the entire ballet cast of swans to flee the theater, still in their tutus, and disperse throughout downtown Havana, creating widespread panic and the belief among some tourists that they were witnessing a strange avian festival."
"Meanwhile," she said, without missing a beat, "Leo, having jumped from the moving truck, found that the cigar box he had stolen was not the correct one. It was the Spanish ambassador's personal stash. Frustrated, and still, I suppose, feeling philosophical, he decided that the cigars, like the parrot, deserved to be free. So he handed them out to the crowd fleeing the swan-dressed ballet dancers."
"Finally, to escape the police who were now pursuing him, he hid in the only place he could think of: Cuba's national aviary. And in a final act of alcoholic brilliance, he decided that if one bird deserved to be free, all of them did. He opened all the cages."
Helena leaned back in her armchair. "Havana was under an unofficial avian quarantine for three days. Hundreds of exotic birds, from flamingos to hummingbirds, flooded the city. The diplomatic incident involved Spain, France, Russia, and, of course, Cuba. It cost me every favor I had in the Western Hemisphere to get Leo out of the country in the hold of a banana freighter. The high command informed me that if Leonidas ever set foot on Cuban soil again, they would consider it an act of war."
She looked at the bottle of Lagavulin on the bar. Then she looked at Leo, who hadn't moved, his face still hidden in his hands.
"And that," Helena concluded, "is why Leonidas is strictly forbidden from consuming alcohol during any operation. Or, to be more precise, at any time he is on the same continent as me."
The story, even in its "watered-down" version, left the group speechless. They were trying to visualize the scene: a parrot biting a minister, ballet dancers running through the streets, uncontrolled fireworks, and a man handing out cigars in the midst of chaos. It was too much.
Jo Yu-ri looked at Leo, who was still curled up on the sofa. The man who had coldly described a Colombian necktie, the man who had survived North Korea, was utterly terrified by the memory of his own drunken stupidity. The anger she had felt towards him, the exasperation, all dissolved into a single, overwhelming certainty.
This man was a public danger. And, for some reason, he was now their problem.
She stood up, walked to the bar, ignored the whiskey bottle, and grabbed a bottle of water. She approached the curled-up man on the sofa and held it out to him.
"Drink," she said softly. "Water."
Leo looked up, his eyes filled with a shame so deep it was almost childlike. He took the bottle with a trembling hand.
"Thank you," he whispered.
And in that moment, Yu-ri knew her role in this strange family was defined. Helena was the strategist and disciplinarian. The others were the logistical and moral support. And she... she was the chaos wrangler. The woman tasked with ensuring the hurricane didn't drown in its own storm. And definitely keeping him away from rum.