Chapter 13 - The Traitor Within the Boardroom
The name printed at the bottom of the encrypted transfer authorization form made my blood run cold. It wasn't Ethan. It wasn't Marcus Sterling. It belonged to Henderson — the frail, elderly board director who had expressed such vocal panic during yesterday’s emergency meeting.
'Henderson,' I whispered, staring at the digital signature authentication timestamp. 'He’s been leaking our naval logistics data to Bellum Veritas for over a year.'
Arthur nodded grimly, leaning over my desk to point at the IP routing metadata. 'Henderson didn't just panic about the debt acceleration yesterday because he was worried about company equity. He panicked because if Sterling Capital took over, his secret partnership with Bellum Veritas would have been buried under new management. He needed Cole Meridian to remain stable enough to continue funneling classified military shipping routes to the European syndicate.'
'A Trojan horse right inside our own inner circle,' I said, feeling a cold fury building inside my chest. For months, while I thought I was fighting an external corporate raid, we had been leaking national security secrets from the very top of the executive ladder.
'What’s our next move, Claire?' Arthur asked, his eyes sharp and focused. 'Do we call the federal marshals right now?'
'No,' I replied, shaking my head slowly as a calculated plan began to form in my mind. 'If we arrest Henderson now, Bellum Veritas will immediately activate their fail-safes, wipe their secondary servers, and vanish into the shadows before federal intelligence can map their entire European network.'
'Then what do you propose?' Arthur asked.
'We lay a trap,' I said, a dangerous smile touching my lips. 'We let Henderson think his cover is still completely secure. We send out a fake encrypted transmission regarding a dummy naval supply route scheduled for tomorrow morning. When he logs in to leak it to Bellum Veritas, we catch him red-handed with his digital fingers in the cookie jar.'
By midnight, the trap was set. Arthur constructed a flawless, highly convincing decoy data packet detailing a fictional naval transport route through the South China Sea, complete with military encryption signatures that looked identical to our classified files.
We waited in the darkened server room, watching the real-time access logs on Arthur’s dual monitors.
At 12:47 AM, a secure external connection pinged the server from an encrypted IP address originating from a luxury penthouse in Manhattan — Henderson’s private residence.
'There he is,' Arthur whispered, tapping the screen. 'He’s downloading the decoy file right now.'
May you like
I watched the progress bar tick upward to 100%. The download complete notification flashed green.
'Send the complete access log and the decryption key to naval intelligence and the FBI,' I instructed quietly. 'And tell Detective Vance we have a warrant to execute.'
