Chapter 13 - The Swiss Connection
|
Maya didn't sleep that night. She stayed in the executive office, the black ledger spread open across her desk, surrounded by empty coffee cups. Leo arrived at six in the morning, finding her furiously cross-referencing Victoria's handwritten notes with printed digital bank records.
"Maya, you need to rest," Leo said gently, setting a fresh bagel on her desk. "You look like you're about to collapse."
"I can't rest, Leo. Victoria called me from prison last night."
Leo stopped dead in his tracks. "How is that even possible? She's in maximum security."
"She has friends in dark places," Maya said, rubbing her exhausted eyes. "She told me she wasn't acting alone. There is a shadow partner, someone much more powerful who orchestrated the takeover. I’ve been going through the ledger again, looking for anything we missed."
"And did you find anything?"
Maya spun the heavy ledger around, pointing to a specific page near the back.
"Look at this column. It’s separate from the bribery funds and the Cayman shell companies. These are massive, continuous transfers—almost fifty million dollars over four years—sent to a single account number. No name, no shell company attached. Just a routing number and a single initial: 'S.T.'"
Leo pulled up a financial tracing program on his tablet and typed in the routing number. He waited a few tense seconds while the algorithm searched global databases.
"It's a heavily encrypted account at the Banque Privee de Genève in Switzerland," Leo confirmed, looking up at Maya with wide eyes. "It's a numbered account, entirely anonymous. Swiss banking secrecy laws make it virtually impossible to crack from the outside."
"Then we aren't going to do it from the outside," Maya said, closing the ledger and standing up. She grabbed her blazer from the back of the chair.
"What do you mean?" Leo asked nervously.
"Victoria is in jail, which means her shadow partner is going to panic. They are going to try to drain that Swiss account before the FBI can subpoena the international records. We cannot let that fifty million dollars disappear, Leo. That money belongs to my father’s legacy."
May you like
"Maya, you can't just walk into a Swiss bank and demand access to a secret account."
"Watch me," Maya said, picking up her phone. "Book us two tickets on the corporate jet. We are going to Geneva."
