Her shoulders relaxed slightly as she stepped back and gave Draco a brief smile.
Draco touched his thumb to the scanner and counted the seconds. Two seconds and the light blinked green.
He needed to buy Dmytro a beer. The man was a genius. They were lucky to have the support of Hammer’s team in Zurich.
Herr Carlson scanned his thumb. When the light turned green, a heavy lock clicked. Carlson turned the four-handled crank in the middle of the solid steel door and pulled it open.
The walls of the vault were lined with row after row of boxes in various sizes. Small and medium were higher up. The ones closer to the floor were larger. Herr Carlson led them around a tabletop positioned in the center of the vault to the far corner and pointed to a medium-sized box marked 157. “You have your key,” he stated rather than asked.
Draco held up the brass key.
Herr Carlson gave a brief nod. “I will wait outside the vault to give you privacy.” The man left them alone, obviously confident their key would open only one box.
Draco held out the key. “Here, you do the honors.”
Cate took the key and inserted it into the lock situated at her eye level. It turned easily. She reached up and attempted to pull the box out of the wall. “It’s a little heavier than I thought.”
“May I?” Draco asked.
Cate stepped back. “Please.”
Draco tugged the box free and laid it on the wooden tabletop.
The box was full of large envelopes with a date handwritten across each. Eleven envelopes in all, the dates ranging over the past year, the most recent a month ago.
Cate folded back a flap of the top one and removed the documents from within.
Draco stood beside Cate as she sifted through the papers. A purchase order originating from the State Department. A bill of lading. An inventory of items in a shipment and a printed receipt of payment to Alpenhorn Relief Logistics.
“Holy shit,” Cate whispered. She held up a purchase order and pointed to the requesting party.
Marcus Calloway’s name was typed clearly in the header.
Draco pointed to the signature at the bottom of the page.
Garrett Sterling.
He pulled out another document. It was the payment release form to Alpenhorn Relief Logistics, also signed by Garrett Sterling. He laid the documents side by side and studied the signature. The signatures appeared to be too exact to be handwritten.
Cate frowned, chewing at her bottom lip. “A stamp?” she said so softly Draco could barely hear her words and hopefully any recording wouldn’t pick them up. She was clearly disturbed by the signature.
Draco could understand her reluctance to believe a man as high in the State Department’s food chain, and her father’s friend of so many years, could be complicit in a scheme to steal so much money from the US government.
Draco dug to the bottom of the envelopes and found a book. He brought it out and laid it on the table.
Cate opened it. Together, they studied the neat rows of dates, descriptions and numbers.
The book was a ledger used to record the shipments passing through Alpenhorn Relief Logistics.
Draco frowned at the stack of folders and the ledger. They needed time to sift through them and make sense of everything in a place where they could talk and share their thoughts without being recorded. Not in the vault. Not in the bank. Brunner had been so adamant that they shouldn’t have brought up the Alpenhorn name.
His hackles rising, instinct telling him they needed to leave, Draco gathered the envelopes, closed the ledger, and stacked everything in one pile.
“What are you doing?” Cate asked.
“I’m ready to leave if you are.”
She stared up into his eyes.
