The Silent Colonel and the Downfall of the Monroe Family Empire
The red light turned green.
A heavy mechanical clunk echoed from inside the brickwork.
The steel door swung open an inch.
A cool, metallic smell drifted out from the dark interior.
Inside the safe, I could see rows of neat black plastic cases.
They were military-grade external hard drives.
Next to them were several thick leather ledgers and a stack of foreign currency.
Miller reached in with gloved hands and pulled out the first drive.
He connected it to his terminal with a high-speed cable.
“Accessing the directory,” Miller said.
The screen flashed with lines of code.
Grant watched the screen, his face completely pale.
“These are encrypted with a foreign algorithm,” Miller said.
“It looks like the one used by the Beijing servers.”
“Can you bypass it?” I asked.
“Already on it, Colonel,” Miller said.
“We have the decryption keys from the intercepted emails.”
Grant’s head snapped toward me.
“The emails?” he whispered.
“We had a tap on your server in Geneva, Grant,” I said.
“We have had it for four months.”
“You knew,” he said.
“We knew everything,” I said.