Chapter 28
The folding metal table in Rachel’s spare bedroom wobbled every time I shifted my weight. At six in the morning, the street below was silent, save for the occasional hiss of a city bus brakes. I zipped my coat to my chin against the draft from the window and turned on my laptop.
The thumb drive was cold to the touch. I plugged it into the side port, its small blue light blinking against the pale yellow wallpaper of the room. It held the duplicated clearance codes Marcus had pulled from the agency servers before the Treasury agents padlocked my office.
My fingers traced the edge of the plastic casing. If Harrison thought freezing my personal checking accounts would leave me stranded, he did not know the depth of my father’s old digital pathways. I opened the decryption suite and began typing the string of characters from the yellow notepad.
The screen flickered, running a diagnostic check that bypassed the standard administrative firewalls. Rows of gray system directories began to populate the screen, mapping the data traffic of the Vance Veteran Initiative.
I paused on a line of code labeled routing protocol seven. It was an active back-door channel, established four years ago, linked directly to Patricia Vance’s private personal banking accounts in Zurich.
A list of twenty-four separate wire transfers appeared on the screen, all dated within the last fiscal quarter. Each transaction was marked with my own automated digital signature.
Rachel opened the bedroom door, holding two mugs of black coffee. She set one on the folding table, her eyes scanning the columns of numbers on the monitor.
“Is that what I think it is?” Rachel asked.
“Patricia has been transferring funds directly from the charity account into her personal estate,” I said. “She used my credentials to authorize the releases.”
“How much did she move?”
“Three million last month alone,” I said, pointing to the final line.
Rachel rubbed her temples, her eyes narrowing as she looked at the bank routing numbers. “We need the source code from the agency’s primary server room to prove these signatures were automated, not manual. Can Marcus get us in?”
“Marcus is waiting at the side entrance right now,” I said, grabbing my coat.
The rain had stopped by the time I reached the secure basement entrance of the agency building at half past ten. Marcus was standing near the loading dock, holding a clipboard and wearing his standard technician coveralls. He did not say a word as he swiped his credential card and held the heavy steel door open for me.
We walked down the narrow, fluorescent-lit hallway toward the main server room. The air grew colder, smelling of ozone and floor wax, until the low hum of the cooling fans filled the corridor.
May you like
Marcus unlocked the server room door and closed it behind us, plunging us into the darkness of the room, lit only by the blinking green and blue LEDs of the server racks.
“The agency security team updated the firewalls at midnight,” Marcus whispered, pulling a high-speed fiber cable from his pocket. “They patched the standard access ports.”
