“Was transmitted directly through Conduit Nine into the command redoubt at Offutt Air Force Base.”
Chief Judge Eleanor Mercer stepped to the head of the table.
The eighty-two-year-old jurist pulled an unsealed, forty-year-old foreign chancery registry from her portfolio, certified by the **High Court of the Principality of Liechtenstein**:
“And there is one more detail you failed to audit, Arthur,” Judge Mercer said, her voice dropping forty decibels of pure, un-forgiving Maine iron:
“In nineteen-eighty-four, when you and your brother Julian established The Valkyrie Holding Corp in Vaduz… where did you acquire the foundational corporate charter?”
Chief Justice Arthur Sterling-Vance stopped breathing.
His pupils dilated until the blue of his eyes vanished completely into black.
His throat worked in dry, spastic, un-coordinated clicks:
k-k-k.
“Valkyrie was incorporated by our Swiss fiduciaries,” Arthur wheezed:
“Bank Leu in Zurich!”
“Bank Leu did not create that charter, Arthur,” Judge Mercer revealed, turning the vellum folio to page one hundred and twelve:
