Silence stretches before Cillian speaks again, and this time, I can hear the rage suppressed in his voice. “How many runs?”
“Six,” Luis whispers. “Over three months.”
Cillian steeples his fingers in front of him. “Who designed it?” he asks.
Luis shakes his head. “Not me. The clone codes were generated outside Vigo. We received them through an encrypted relay.”
“From where?” I ask.
Luis hesitates again. “A logistics consultancy out of Madrid.”
Cillian’s expression doesn’t change. “Name.”
Luis swallows. “Torres & Vale.”
I know that name. It’s real, registered, and clean on paper. “They contract with multiple European ports,” I say. “If they’re generating clone codes, they have backend access.”
Luis nods fast. “They pitch it as efficiency optimization. They say they streamline dispatch timing. They offered us a side agreement.”
“For a cut?” Cillian asks.
“Yes.”
“How much?”
“Three percent of declared value.”
“Cheap,” Cillian mutters.
“It wasn’t about the money,” Luis blurts. “They promised protection.”
That captures Cillian’s attention. “From whom?”
Luis’s voice drops. “From whoever would eventually notice.”
I hold his gaze.
“Who eventually noticed?” I ask.
Luis looks at me directly. “You did.”
There’s nothing more to say to that. Cillian realizes as much and stands. “If Torres & Vale are cloning IDs, we don’t need Vigo,” he says. “We need their server.”
Luis nods weakly. “They operate through a remote dispatch hub. If you freeze their access key, the clone system collapses.”
“How?” Cillian asks.
Luis points to the half-burned folder. “There’s a master authorization code embedded in each amended manifest. It looks like a routing signature.”
I grab one of the papers and scan the header.
There’s a small string under the dispatch stamp, with the same pattern across the altered loads. “It’s consistent,” I say. “Same signature embedded in each amendment.”
Cillian watches me.
“If we isolate that string and cross-check with standard manifests, we can identify every cloned ID they’ve issued,” I continue. “Then you alert customs in Madrid and Lisbon simultaneously. Once their access node is flagged, they can’t generate new codes.”
Luis nods. “If you move fast, you’ll catch the next shipment mid-route.”
