Chapter 8: The Weight of the Ledger
Inside the house, Arthur watched Miller slide the manila envelope out of the agent's hand as he entered the kitchen. Miller pulled the flap open with two fingers, extracting a single sheet of onionskin paper yellowed with age.
"Recognize the handwriting?" Miller asked, holding the sheet up to the overhead fluorescent light.
Arthur looked at it for a long moment. The ink was faded iron gall, written with an old fountain pen that had a slight scratch in the nib—the kind of pen his mentor, Dr. Henderson, had used until the day he retired in seventy-six.
"Henderson," Arthur murmured.
"Henderson died of a stroke in eighty-two," Miller said. "And yet this memorandum is dated six months after his funeral, referencing a meeting that never took place in a building that was demolished during the Eisenhower administration."
"Henderson was eccentric," Arthur said defensively. "He kept notes for years after he stopped working. He'd date things in the future just to see if anyone was paying attention when they cataloged his estate."
"He was an operative for the Office of Policy Coordination before it was folded into the Agency," Miller said, his voice hardening. "He didn't make jokes about dates. Every number on this sheet corresponds to an offshore account that was never liquidated during the cleanup of the Berlin station."
May you like
Arthur reached out and touched the edge of the paper, his fingers steady despite the tension in the room. "And you think I found the account numbers?"
"I think someone accessed them from your terminal at 4:15 PM," Miller repeated, like a man reading a verdict from a script he had memorized hours ago. "And I think you're going to tell me which foreign attaché you're selling the decryption keys to before the sun goes down, or we're going to start dismantling this house brick by brick to see what else you've got hidden in the insulation."
