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Adrianos, The Greek Devil

Page 72

by D.C. Beks

Second fee: 14:06.

OB6: 14:13.

Third: 11:52.

OB6: 11:59.

Seven minutes.

I check another. Seven minutes. Again. Seven.

"Oh, you arrogant bastard."

I sit straighter and run every match. The legacy fee is a trigger. Or a marker. Every time it appears, money associated with the same transaction moves through an OB6-linked intermediary exactly seven minutes later.

Not occasionally. Not approximately. Exactly seven minutes.

I can feel the structure opening.

Whoever designed this needed a way to identify which legitimate transactions were being skimmed without creating communications that could be intercepted. So they used an obsolete banking charge.

To everyone else, it's a meaningless fraction. Inside the system, it's an instruction.

I search for administrator access. Asterion's internal records aren't available to me, but Adrianos's archives contain transaction authorizations going back years. Some include banker identifiers.

D.K.

Dimitris Karras.

I stop. "No."

I pull another.

D.K.

Another. Different account manager. Then another with Karras.

I need more.

Suspicion isn't proof, and I refuse to walk into Adrianos's office with a theory based on initials and a dead fee.

He'll act. That's what he does. I need certainty before I put a name in his hands. I create a timeline of every LTP-4 charge I can identify and compare it with every transaction involving Karras personally.

The overlap is substantial but incomplete. Good, because if it were perfect, I'd distrust it.

Karras doesn't need to touch every transaction. He needs access to the system that does.

I search for periods when he's unavailable, such as conference travel, board meetings, and annual leave.

There.

Fourteen months ago, Karras spends nine days in Switzerland.

No LTP-4 charges during those nine days. The day after he returns, one appears.

Coincidence.

I need more.