Chapter 23 - dark smoke
The line went dead with a hollow dial tone. I stood freezing in the dim library light, the black receiver still held tightly against my ear, listening to the empty hum of the wire.
"Who was it?" Nora asked, stepping closer to the desk, her face drained of color.
"It was Julian's signal," I whispered, setting the phone back on its cradle with a heavy hand. "Two short taps, one long. He used to do that when we played hide-and-seek in the old carriage house."
I picked up the silver lighter again, holding it up to the warm glow of the desk lamp. I turned the bottom casing toward my face, examining the five carved numbers again: 04-19-88. They were not just a birthdate. Julian had always been obsessed with mechanical puzzles and hidden compartments. Using the small silver pocketknife from my desk drawer, I carefully pried at the thin brass seam along the internal fuel reservoir.
With a soft, metallic click, the bottom felt pad shifted backward, revealing a tiny, hollowed-out chamber inside the steel casing. Tucked tightly within the narrow space was a strip of clear photographic film no wider than a postage stamp.
"Microfilm," I murmured, holding the small strip up against the bulb of the desk lamp. Tiny rows of handwritten text, bank routing codes, and corporate seals became visible through the translucent plastic.
"Is that the ledger?" Nora whispered, leaning over my shoulder.
"It's half of it," I said, scanning the microscopic lines. "These are the shell accounts registered under our father's company name in Zurich. But the decryption key isn't here. It's somewhere else."
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Suddenly, the headlights of a car flashed across the library ceiling, casting long, moving shadows of the window frames against the wall. A heavy black SUV had pulled into the gravel driveway near the front gates, its engine idling silently in the dark rain.
Nora grabbed my arm, her fingers digging through my jacket sleeve into my skin. "They followed me, Daniel. The men from the harbor... they know I came to the estate."
