Chapter 9 - The Shell Game
Forty-eight hours later, Julian sat in the secure sub-basement of the FBI field office. The room hummed with the sound of high-powered servers. Agent Vance and a team of cyber-crimes specialists stood behind Julian, watching his every move.
"The mercenary's watch had a direct ping-protocol to Desmond's handler," Julian explained, his fingers dancing across the mechanical keyboard. "It’s an automated check-in system. If the watch doesn't ping the server every twelve hours, Desmond knows the team failed."
"So you bypassed it?" Vance asked.
"Better. I spoofed it," Julian smiled grimly. "I sent a localized packet simulating a successful mission code. Desmond thinks Maya is dead, and he thinks his men are on their way back. He's relaxed his protocols."
Julian brought up a complex web of financial transactions on the main projector screen.
"This is Desmond's lifeblood," Julian pointed to a series of offshore accounts. "When he faked his death, he couldn't just walk into a bank with forty million dollars. He had to wash it. And he used my wife to do it."
Vance leaned in, squinting at the screen. "Victoria’s charity? The 'Global Hope Foundation'?"
"Exactly," Julian nodded. "Victoria threw lavish galas, collecting millions from Seattle's elite. But the foundation was a front. Desmond was injecting his dirty money into the charity's accounts, mixing it with legitimate donations, and then funneling it out through shell companies disguised as overseas philanthropic grants. He's been living like a king in the shadows on my father's money."
"Can you freeze it?" one of the cyber agents asked.
"No. If I freeze it, he'll get a notification and vanish," Julian said, a predatory glint in his eye. "We don't want to freeze the water. We want to drain the pool while he's swimming in it."
Julian initiated a custom script he had been writing for the last two days. It was a masterpiece of digital infiltration.
"I'm using the backdoor access from the mercenary's watch to bypass Desmond's two-factor authentication," Julian explained as lines of green code flooded the screen. "I am currently initiating a smart-contract protocol on the blockchain. I'm taking every single cent from his offshore accounts, his crypto wallets, and his shell companies."
"And where are you putting it?" Vance asked, amazed.
Julian hit the Enter key with a decisive strike.
"I just donated forty million dollars to the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Widows and Orphans Fund," Julian said. "It's irreversible. The blockchain contract is sealed."
Vance let out a low whistle. "He is going to lose his mind."
"That's the point," Julian stood up, grabbing his jacket. "Desmond is a control freak. When he realizes his entire fortune was just wiped out, he's going to panic. He won't trust his digital proxies anymore. He’s going to try to access his physical failsafe. A man like him always has hard cash or gold stashed somewhere for an emergency."
May you like
Julian tapped the screen, showing a blinking red dot on a map of the Pacific Northwest.
"And thanks to the tracker I piggybacked onto the financial drain protocol, I know exactly where that stash is. He's on the move."
