Chapter 44 - Interrogation in the Steel Ward
Before boarding the helicopter, I needed one last piece of the operational cipher: the primary arming sequence sequence code Ronald Vance had entrusted to his family, a code Arthur had guarded for fifty years.
I landed at the El Dorado County High-Security Detention Center twenty minutes later. Escorted by two heavily armed federal marshals, I entered the interrogation room.
Arthur Vance sat chained to the steel table, his designer silk shirt stained and rumpled, his hair disheveled, and his aristocratic veneer completely obliterated. When the door opened and he saw me in full combat webbing with a sidearm holstered on my chest, his watery eyes widened in terror.
"Marcus!" he pleaded, lunging forward until the chains jerked him back. "You have to get me out of here! Clara is losing her mind in the women's wing, and the guards—they took my blood pressure medication! Tell these animals who we are!"
I pulled out a steel chair and sat down directly across from him. I didn't speak. I simply placed my grandfather’s brass key on the cold metal surface between us.
Arthur stopped breathing. All the color drained from his bloated cheeks.
"Where... where did you find that?" he stammered.
"In your safety deposit box, Arthur," I said quietly. "Along with Grandfather's journals and the wire transfer agreements from Clara’s shell companies in Geneva."
Arthur began to shake. "You don't understand, Marcus. It was supposed to be easy money. Clara met these men in Monaco—they said the old naval station was abandoned, that there were salvage rights to unrecorded military scrap. They said if I took Whispering Pines while you were on deployment, they'd pay off my debts, buy Clara the lifestyle she wanted, and give us fifty million dollars!"
"You sold access to an automated doomsday weapon to an international black-market syndicate," I said, leaning in. "And now Tartarus is on the surface. Its missiles are arming. In less than two and a half hours, automated telemetry will launch twelve nuclear warheads into the Pacific Basin."
Arthur burst into tears, snot running down his upper lip. "I didn't know it was armed! My father told me it was just an acoustic buoy network! He swore it was harmless!"
"He told you the truth, and you lied to yourself to justify your greed," I snapped, slamming my hand on the table. The sharp crack made him jump. "Give me the manual entry code, Arthur. Grandfather gave you the four-digit family override. What is it?"
"I don't remember!" he wept. "It was fifty years ago!"
"Remember," I whispered, my voice colder than deep trench water. "Or I walk out that door, leave you in this cell, and let the first warhead detonate forty miles off the coast. Whispering Pines will burn, this prison will burn, and you will die knowing you murdered your own children for an inheritance you never earned."
Arthur choked on a sob, his gaze fixed on the brass key. "Nineteen... nineteen-seventy-four. Ronald's hull number... zero-four-one-two. The code is 0-4-1-2-Alpha."
I picked up the key and stood.
"Marcus, wait!" Arthur screamed as the marshals moved in. "Tell me you'll drop the charges! I gave you the code! I'm your father!"
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I paused at the heavy steel door without turning back. "My father died when he tried to sell my home to pay for his vanity. You’re just a traitor awaiting trial."
***
