Chapter 13 - The Proxy Protocol
The silence in the submarine command center was absolute and suffocating. Captain Elias Thorne had been my commanding officer during my first three years in naval intelligence. He was the man who taught me how to read enemy tactics, how to anticipate betrayals, and how to operate without mercy. And now, he was a ghost sitting at the bottom of the ocean with his finger on a seismic trigger. “You died in Malta, Elias,” I said coldly, leaning closer to the communications microphone. “I read the after-action report myself.” “You read the report I wrote and filed under a dead man’s credentials,” Thorne corrected smoothly. “I needed to disappear, Evelyn.” “The Pentagon lacked the vision to see the future of geopolitical warfare.” “They wanted to play with drones and trade embargoes.” “I realized that true power lies in controlling the earth itself.” “By triggering a localized tsunami, Elias?” I fired back, my voice echoing with pure disdain. “You are talking about slaughtering millions of innocent civilians.” “I am talking about a hard reset,” Thorne replied coldly. “But we have a slight problem, Evelyn.” “My seismic core requires a final cryptographic authorization key to arm the detonation sequence.” “A key that was unfortunately left behind on a laptop in your sister’s study when your NCIS friends crashed the party.” My mind flashed back to the titanium laptop we had confiscated from Caroline’s office. Julian hadn't just been holding data; he had been holding the literal launch key for a weapon of mass destruction. “You don't have the key, Elias,” I said. “It’s sitting in a lead-lined evidence vault at federal headquarters.” Thorne let out a slow, dark laugh that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. “Oh, Evelyn, you always underestimated the layers of a good proxy protocol.” “I don't need the physical laptop.” “I just need the backup authorization code that was auto-forwarded to your father’s personal cloud drive.” My heart stopped. “What did you say?” I demanded. “Julian was a very thorough associate,” Thorne explained. “He knew the laptop might be compromised, so he hid a mirrored backup file inside a perfectly mundane financial spreadsheet.” “A spreadsheet your father downloaded yesterday when Julian convinced him to review a fake real estate portfolio.” Thorne’s voice dropped into a lethal whisper. “I have a mercenary strike team currently breaching the perimeter of your family’s home, Evelyn.” “They are going to extract that file from your father’s computer.” “And they are not going to leave any witnesses behind.”
