18. The First Move
The First Move
Janice
The main screen looks like someone dumped eighteen months of HAVEN investigations onto it and told us to make sense of the mess.
Which, unfortunately, is exactly what happened.
I set my coffee beside Steve’s and stare at the overlapping maps, names, companies and financial trails covering three screens.
“We’re going to need more screens.”
G looks offended. “We have twelve.”
“Then we’re going to need more walls.”
Steve snorts beside me.
We’ve been here less than an hour and already every workstation is occupied. Felicity and G are working through the digital files Alexei Rimsky gave Victor and Adrian before they left Saint-Pierre.
Shane and Verity are working remotely from MacLeod’s Summit, their feeds open on one of the side screens. Shane is buried in the financial records while Verity matches names against everything she brought out of Washington.
Harmony has the list of forty-seven compromised officials divided by country and jurisdiction, with Rafael and Renzo helping her work through the international connections. Renzo takes the European countries while Dimitry handles anything tied to Russia.
Faith is going back through every financial connection we’ve uncovered since Napa.
And we’re still barely scratching the surface.
Victor stands in front of the central display, watching the information build.
“All right,” Steve says. “Start with what we know.”
G brings up the Council structure.
“Alexei’s files confirm the Council structure Victor recorded,” Felicity says. “They also give us seventeen companies we hadn’t connected to Legacy before Saint-Pierre.”
“Fronts?” I ask.
“Some. Others are legitimate businesses being used to move money, people or resources.”
“And I’ve already matched six of them to transactions we’ve seen in previous investigations,” Shane adds.
He sends the first cluster to the main screen. Lines appear between companies, accounts and names.
One leads straight back to a transport company we encountered months ago.
Another connects to a Meridian property we never managed to trace beyond its holding company.
A third touches Cunningham.
Steve leans closer.
“Well, shit.”
“Exactly,” Shane says.
Verity adds another file. Then Faith. The screen changes again.
Connections that used to stop at shell companies suddenly keep going.
I look from one to the next.
Napa. Arizona. Washington. Manitoba.
Operations we treated as separate because we could never prove what sat above them.
Now we can.
“Alexei didn’t just give us new intelligence,” I say slowly.
Victor looks at me.
“He gave us the missing pieces between what we already had.”
“Yes.”
I turn back to the screens. That might be more valuable.
We already have eighteen months of evidence, witness statements, financial records, recovered files and intelligence pulled from Meridian operations around the world. We’ve been collecting pieces of the same machine without knowing exactly how they fit together.
Now someone who sat at the top has handed us the diagram.
G sends another connection onto the display. Then another.
Steve straightens beside me.
“Victor.”
“I see it.”
The room quiets.
Victor walks toward the screen and studies the growing network, his gaze moving across the twelve families, then down through the companies, officials, financial routes and Meridian operations spreading beneath them.
When he turns around, something in his expression has changed.
“Until now, we’ve been reacting to Legacy,” he says. “Finding their operations. Extracting their victims. Following whatever they left behind.”
Nobody interrupts him.
Victor looks back at the screen.
“We don’t have to do that anymore.”
A chill runs over my skin.
Steve folds his arms. “We can go after them.”
Victor nods.
“Now we can hurt them.”
Blackstone Ventures HQ, San Francisco. 0945 hours.
By the time we finish the first pass, the main screen barely resembles the one we started with.
Felicity has color-coded the new companies against our existing intelligence. Financial links from Faith and Shane feed into one side. Verity’s political connections sit beside them.
Harmony, Rafael, Renzo and Dimitry are working through the officials by region, while Serenity and Mercy cross-reference the names against everything we’ve collected from previous rescues and investigations.
Destiny is digging through the companies and properties connected to them, looking for anything we might have encountered before without realizing who was behind it.
Every few minutes, another line appears. Some confirm what we already suspected. Others give us something we’ve never had before.
A way in.
“Stop there,” Steve says.
Felicity freezes the display.
He points to a logistics company sitting beneath one of the Legacy fronts. “We’ve seen them before.”
G searches the archive and pulls up an old file.
“Meridian Global Aid Foundation,” he says. “Greece.”
Steve looks at me. “Solace.”
I nod. The company handled freight movements connected to the operation that targeted her. At the time, we traced it through layers of ownership until the trail disappeared.
It doesn’t disappear now.
Alexei’s records take us through another holding company, then into a Legacy-controlled shipping network.
Renzo looks up from his workstation. “I have three European ports connected to the same company. Genoa, Marseille and Piraeus.”
“Active?” Victor asks.
“Very.”
Another connection appears.
Faith sits forward. “I’ve got something.”
She sends a group of transactions to the main screen.
“Payments from a Legacy holding company into four Meridian fronts over the last eleven months. Different amounts, different dates, but they’re all routed through the same financial intermediary.”
Shane’s voice comes through the speakers from MacLeod’s Summit. “And now we know who owns it.”
A name appears beneath the transactions. One of Alexei’s seventeen companies.
Steve gives a low whistle.
Faith is already following the money outward.
“Two accounts in the US. One in Switzerland. Another in Singapore.”
“Can they be frozen?” I ask.
“Not by us.”
Harmony looks across the table. “But I know people who can start asking questions.”
Verity comes through the speakers. “So do I.”
Victor doesn’t answer immediately. He’s looking at the whole network. So am I.
For months, we’ve found operations after women disappeared. We’ve followed evidence backward from victims, safe houses, companies and compromised officials, trying to work out who was behind each piece.
This is different. We’re starting at the top.
G opens another file.
“Victor, we’ve got an active Meridian property.”
The room stills.
“Where?”
“Outside Phoenix.”
Steve looks up sharply. “Phoenix?”
I remember that name. We had a hint pointing there eighteen months ago, but never enough to chase.
G nods. “Alexei just gave us the missing piece.”
Felicity brings up satellite imagery. Large property. High walls. Private road.
Faith finds recent payments for security, food deliveries and medical supplies.
Steve’s expression hardens.
“That place is still operating.”
“Looks like it,” G says.
I stare at the property. We don’t know who’s inside or what Meridian is using it for. But I can imagine.
And this time, we haven’t found it because somebody escaped, disappeared or nearly died.
We found it before anyone asked us to.
Victor turns from the screen.
“What else can we hit?”
Blackstone Ventures HQ, San Francisco. 1030 hours.
By mid-morning, we have nine targets.
Not people. Infrastructure.
Companies moving Legacy money. Properties being used by Meridian. Financial intermediaries hiding transactions. Logistics networks shifting resources between countries.
And the property outside Phoenix.
Victor stands at the head of the table studying the list.
“We don’t touch anything unless we can protect Alexei,” he says.
Adrian nods. “If they determine this came from him, he’s dead.”
“So we only use what his intelligence lets us prove through evidence we already have,” Steve says.
“Right.”
That slows us down. It doesn’t stop us.
Harmony identifies two investigations that can be triggered without mentioning HAVEN at all. Faith and Shane isolate financial records that can be handed to regulators without exposing where the connection came from.
Verity has enough from Washington to put another compromised official under scrutiny, and Charity can verify the political connections before turning them into something she can air through Antoine’s network.
G and Felicity work backward through the Phoenix property until they find the weak point.
A contractor.
“Security company,” Felicity says. “They’ve been billing the property for twenty-four-hour coverage for fourteen months.”
Mercy looks over. “Same company from Arizona?”
G checks. His expression changes.
“Yes.”
Mercy is already reaching for the old case file. Within minutes, she and Serenity have enough existing evidence on the company to establish a Meridian connection without touching Alexei’s intelligence.
Victor looks at Steve.
“Phoenix?”
Steve studies the satellite images again. “We need eyes on it before anyone goes through that gate.”
“Agreed.”
Angus pushes away from the wall. “I can be on a flight this afternoon.”
Jax looks at him. “I’m coming.”
Victor nods once. “Surveillance only until we know what we’re dealing with.”
“Understood.”
Destiny sends another file to the screen.
“I’ve got one.”
A property company in Nevada. We know the name because it appeared during Hope’s kidnapping. At the time, it was just another corporate layer between Meridian and the people holding her.
Now it connects to three other properties. One in Nevada. One in California. One in Oregon.
Steve stares at them.
“They’ve built themselves a bloody network.”
“And we’ve just found the addresses,” I say.
Victor turns back to the board.
Nine targets. Nine places where we can start pulling pieces out of Legacy without exposing the man who gave us the map.
“What happens if we move on all of them?” I ask.
Harmony answers first. “Separately? They’ll look like unrelated investigations.”