"Harold," Agent Vance called out, his gravelly baritone quiet, stripped of the celebratory tone of our previous victory. "We need to go inside. The United States District Court for the Western District of North Carolina just unsealed forty-two terabytes of encrypted communications seized from Arthur Vance's offshore clearinghouse in Nassau."
We sat around the oak dining table—the table where Margaret had counted her three cashier's checks eight months earlier.
Agent Vance clicked the brass tumblers of the courier pouch, opening the stiff canvas to reveal a series of oversized, laminated digital forensic spreadsheets, printed on legal bond paper and stamped: TOP SECRET // NOFORN // SPECIAL COMPARTMENTED ACCESS.
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"When Arthur Vance was indicted for laundering vintage American vehicles," Agent Vance began, leaning over the oak, "we assumed he was an isolated high-end fence dealing with eccentric millionaires in Dubai and Zurich. But forty-eight hours ago, our cyber-intrusion teams in Quantico decrypted the master manifest for Operation Steel Talon."
