Conan: I'm really not the mastermind behind the scenes

On a street in Shibuya.

Rena Mizunashi lowered her baseball cap and walked discreetly through the crowd, hurrying towards the station.

She thought of the news she had seen a few minutes earlier; the words felt like lead, heavy and weighing on her heart…

……

Early this morning, Rena Mizunashi was summoned to a base in Shibuya by Rum, who asked her to identify whether Bourbon was an undercover agent.

Rum did not show his face at all, and his voice was electronic. She only saw Curaçao and a few of Glenn's men. From their conversation, she judged that the operation was in the hands of someone else.

She didn't know if the operation had succeeded. At three o'clock in the afternoon, Curaçao said she could leave without giving any further instructions. She had many questions in her mind, but considering that there were Rum's people everywhere, she didn't dare to ask too many questions and hurriedly left.

Then, after leaving the base, Rena Mizunashi learned what had happened in Tokyo that day.

A police officer was captured by criminals and his killing was broadcast live online, and the incident was reported almost simultaneously by Nichibumi TV.

She called her colleagues to ask, and they told her that the TV station had no choice because the perpetrator had planted bombs in several rooms at the station, threatening to detonate them if the station didn't report on it.

Rena Mizunashi was born and raised in Japan. Although she later studied in the United States and joined the CIA, she was very clear about the style of certain institutions in Japan.

Given the way public security police operate, regardless of whether the TV station was coerced, this report has severely embarrassed them, and they will definitely be investigated in the future.

Not to mention that the bomb was planted directly inside the TV station. Compared to outsiders, the police would definitely prioritize investigating the TV station staff and people who had recently entered and exited the station.

—And those who ask the TV station for leave today, avoid a bomb crisis, and do not have an alibi will undoubtedly become their main focus.

This made Rena Mizunashi, whose identity was sensitive, very uneasy, worried that she would be noticed by the police.

What made her even more uneasy was the CIA's underhanded tactics.

In fact, at the very beginning, the person who infiltrated the organization was her father, Ethan Bendon; she was just an ordinary agent.

However, her father's contact person ran into trouble and was involved in a routine murder case in Tokyo, resulting in his loss of contact with the CIA. In order to re-establish contact with him as quickly as possible, the CIA sent her, their daughter, to him, because she was the only person he would trust at first sight.

A new contact person was also sent along with it.

But just as she infiltrated the organization, found her father, and arranged a time to introduce him to her contact, she made a mistake: someone from the organization secretly planted a transmitter on her.

To protect her, her father died, and her new contact also died. Her situation wasn't much better; she too became a disconnected undercover agent.

Although the CIA eventually managed to contact her, Rena Mizunashi sensed that they didn't really trust her, given that she had made a major mistake that led to the death of her father and contact person, and that they had lost contact with her for nearly a year.

She would regularly report on the tasks, providing them with information about important operations and key figures.

They sometimes act in secret, at most informing her who the target is and telling her to stay away for a while, but they won't tell her exactly what they're going to do.

For example, recently they noticed a girl.

Rena Mizunashi saw her at the last beauty pageant and took a picture of her. She noticed that Gin was interested in her, so after the pageant, she handed the picture over to the CIA.

The CIA quickly identified her.

Shiho Miyano, a Japanese, came to the United States to study at a young age and earned degrees in biology and pharmacy. Her mentor was a Chinese-American scientist who was on the FBI's watch list.

For various reasons, many American institutions target foreign scientists, initially offering exorbitant salaries to recruit them. If they refuse and insist on returning to their home countries, they are more likely to suffer unfortunate accidents or commit suicide.

Given Shiho Miyano's talent, she was naturally on their watchlist. It's just a pity that, on the eve of this gifted girl's graduation, before any organizations or companies could extend offers, she died in a car accident.

After obtaining Shiho Miyano's resume and the so-called cause of death, Rena Mizunashi quickly understood what was going on. Shiho Miyano was sent to the United States by the organization for training. After completing her studies, the organization immediately arranged for her to fake her death so that she could completely disappear from the public eye.

At the same time, she also understood why the FBI undercover agent Rye Whiskey had been targeting Akemi Miyano in the past; it was probably because he noticed her while investigating Shiho Miyano.

Rena Mizunashi sighed silently as she finished reminiscing.

She planned to go home first and contact her CIA colleagues at a suitable time to see how to handle any possible investigations by the Public Security Bureau.

However, in the next second.

"boom!"

A gunshot rang out from the crowd!
Rena Mizunashi tensed instantly. She swiftly dodged behind the wall, then, using the cover, cautiously peered out to observe the gunman's position.

She was stunned when she saw it.

She recognized him; he was one of the CIA agents operating in Japan, her colleague!

...How did they get here? Why did they fire?!?
……

A few dozen seconds earlier, in the crowd, a man in black stared intently at a young man not far ahead.

The other person was Asian, with an ordinary appearance, no different from the group of Japanese people next to him. His clothes were also very common, and he might be lost if he relaxed his guard even a little.

The man in black, with the striking foreign face that stood out in the crowd, couldn't help but curse the FBI as he made his move.

In terms of responsibilities, the FBI has always been in charge of investigating domestic affairs in the United States, while the CIA is responsible for overseas affairs. The two sides have long disliked each other.

They began monitoring the situation when the FBI arrived in Japan to jointly investigate the bombing with local police. Upon discovering that the FBI hadn't left even after the case was closed, they immediately began surveillance. If the FBI overstepped its authority, the CIA would deal with them before Japanese agencies could.

The CIA didn't target the two FBI agents with diplomatic status—their positions were sensitive, and their capture could easily be used against them—so they chose to target a few later agents, managing to install listening devices in their hotels.

This led CIA agents to quickly learn that the FBI was investigating an information trafficker who had fled from the United States to Japan.

Moreover, this intelligence broker is connected to an organization codenamed after alcohol that the CIA has been investigating overseas.

They reported to their superiors, who immediately approved their decision to seize the person directly. Since the FBI had no overseas law enforcement authority, the CIA could strike first.

So, based on information they had eavesdropped on from the FBI, they arrived in Shibuya today.

But they were really lucky.

The man in black looked at the Asian youth in front of him with a smug expression.

He was surrounded by his associates, but he didn't see any FBI agents there. It seemed that this Japanese-American intelligence broker was about to be captured by the CIA.

He had even figured out the interrogation methods; the last time, using water had worked quite well.

He stared at the man in front of him, and suddenly noticed that the man had stopped. The sudden movement caused the young man behind him, carrying a briefcase and dressed like an office worker, to accidentally bump into him.

The CIA agent paid no attention to any of that; he kept his eyes glued to the man, then noticed a colleague on the other side giving him an emergency hand signal—

He's rummaging through something!

"!!!"

The CIA agent's pupils constricted; his first thought was that the other side had noticed their tracking and was preparing to retaliate!
He quickly reached into his pocket, pulled out a gun, and aimed it at the other person.

He completely ignored the fact that there were other people around the victim, making it easy for him to hit an innocent bystander. After all, this wasn't America; he didn't need to care too much about the lives of people from other countries.

"boom!"

A loud bang erupted from the crowd. The CIA agent, hearing a sound very similar to a gunshot, didn't hesitate and aimed in that direction before pulling the trigger!
"Uh...ah!!!"

……

At the front of the crowd, William (Western Pear Brandy) felt his phone vibrate and wanted to take it out to check.

Because he stopped suddenly, someone who was rushing ahead bumped into him from behind, and he instinctively helped the person up.

The man who hit him was dressed in a suit and tie, a young man in his twenties, with a scale and sunflower badge pinned to his chest. He was a lawyer.

William wondered whether it was intentional or accidental, and was about to try to get information out of him when, in the next second, he heard something explode at his feet. The next second, he saw a foreign man a few steps away, clutching his hand and screaming in pain.

His entire palm was a bloody mess, and a gun with a broken barrel lay at his feet, with some red firecracker debris mixed with his blood.

Blood splattered on the faces of many people nearby, and screams erupted from the crowd. Some fragments seemed to have flown further away, and someone in the crowd, who appeared to be a foreigner and whose hair color suggested he was covering his eyes, had blood streaming down his face.

William was taken aback, then immediately understood.

"The barrel exploded?"

He remained calm, while the lawyer who had bumped into him looked terrified.

"What's wrong with the security situation in Japan? How come there are even shootings in the street now..."

William ignored the man. Remembering why he had stopped earlier, he took out his phone.

You're being followed. Leave Shibuya immediately.

No signature.

But William knew that only two people in the organization would send emails like this without a code name or signature, and only one of them would use this tone.

So someone was tracking him. No wonder he always felt like someone was watching him... But how did Anies know? Was he also in the vicinity?

William, who had been summoned to Shibuya for a day, was filled with doubt. (End of Chapter)