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An hour later, Sebastian, Johnny, and I sat around my phone in the penthouse, staring at the screen.
I used your document on Miranda as a starting point. I thought you were exaggerating how secretive she was.
“I wasn’t,” Sebastian said.
I figured that out pretty quickly. She’s good – I’ll give her that. I searched high and low, and I finally found several offshore bank accounts she controls through a bunch of shell corporations. Once I hacked those –
“You hacked her offshore bank accounts?” Sebastian asked, astounded.
That’s what I do, remember? Anyway, I cross-referenced the results with the Templeton Group companies. I found some interesting tidbits. For the last year, Miranda’s been using those offshore accounts to make monthly payments to companies headquartered in Venice, Tokyo, and Mwanza, Tanzania.
I frowned as soon as the words appeared on the phone.
Tokyo… Venice… Tanzania… they all sounded very familiar, for some reason…
Those same companies have been getting deliveries from Templeton Group airplanes for the last two months – but Templeton never used to do business with them before. What’s more, there are flight plans and cargo manifests for all three companies over the next 24 hours – and all of them by the Templeton Group.
“Guys,” I said, suddenly excited. “Guys!”
“What?” Johnny asked.
“The night Mr. Templeton died, he mentioned Tokyo, Venice, and Tanzania over dinner!”
Sebastian looked shocked. “Are you sure?”
“I’m positive! He was all shook up about them, too. He mentioned some recent developments had ruined Tokyo and Venice for him, and that he never wanted to visit Tanzania anyway! This is it – this has to be it!”
“And what is ‘this,’ exactly?”
“Whatever’s happening in Tokyo, Venice, and Tanzania!” I looked excitedly from Sebastian to Johnny. “Koffitz said that if we found the thing that disturbed Mr. Templeton enough to hand over his entire empire to Connor, we’d find what we needed to free him!”
Sebastian looked uneasy. “What is happening in Tokyo, Venice, and Tanzania, Eve?”
Planes are picking up and delivering something. That’s all I know.
“Why don’t you hack the companies and find out more?”
I tried, but there’s next to nothing online. No inventory, no sales records, and most of their business appears to be done in cash.
“What’s on the cargo manifests?” Sebastian asked.
On all three manifests, they list the cargo as ‘machinery.’
“That’s it?!”
That’s it.
“What are we supposed to do with that?!” Sebastian asked, exasperated.
“We should go check it out!” I argued.
“No,” Sebastian scowled.
“It’s too big of a coincidence not to mean something!”
“Maybe the coincidence is that Augustus Templeton lost a bunch of money on business deals there,” Sebastian countered. “Maybe that’s why he doesn’t like those places anymore.”
