Cooper pointed his gold pen at the vellum deed in my lap:
“Arthur Vance needed the master cryptographic key card.”
“He needed the sovereign lineal proxy that only Arthur Mercer’s direct biological descendants could execute upon the child’s fifth birthday.”
“When Marcus Sterling reported that Claire was cornered in that alley and that you were alone in your vehicle, Arthur panicked. Believing you and Leo would be crushed in the engineered collision on Fifth Avenue, he convened an extraordinary emergency midnight session of the Supreme Court for zero-two-hundred hours. Once your deaths were registered, Arthur intended to execute the master conveyance deed tonight, transferring Conduit Ten directly to Valkyrie in Vaduz for sixty billion dollars in carried interest.”
“And tonight…?” I asked.
Vice Admiral David Mercer checked his chronometer:
“At zero-two-hundred hours this morning, Ethan…”
The Admiral tapped his heavy gold signet ring against the titanium case:
“…Chief Justice Arthur Sterling-Vance convened an extraordinary, closed-door emergency midnight session of the Supreme Court inside the West Conference Room beneath One First Street.”
