Chapter 92 - The Cipher of the Twelfth Vault
We dragged the operative into the service corridor of an adjacent courtyard, hidden from the street. Marcus kept the confiscated firearm aimed at the man's chest while I checked his credentials.
His identity card was forged to the highest diplomatic grade, issued under a defunct federal department that ceased operations in the late nineties. But the secondary badge pinned inside his lapel bore the three interlocking circles of the Vance Family Trust.
"Council Member Vance?" I asked, my voice hard. "My mother passed away decades ago. Julian died in Zurich. Who is claiming that name?"
"Not your mother," the operative whispered, clutching his bruised shoulder. "Your sister."
A shockwave of cold stillness washed over me. "I don't have a sister. I am an only child. My father made sure of that when he consolidated the estate."
"That is what he told you," the operative replied, breathing heavily against the damp stones. "When the inheritance was divided in 1974, there were two daughters registered in the private parish registry of St. Gallen. Your father hid the second birth record to avoid splitting the voting equity. She was sent to the convent school in Sion, funded through a blind endowment."
Maya stepped forward, her eyes narrowing as she pulled up the archive data on her handheld terminal. She cross-referenced the 1974 trust ledger with the unredacted files from the blue folder.
"Mom," Maya whispered, her voice tightening with disbelief. "Look at the original signature page from the Christmas dinner folder. The bottom margin was cut off by two millimeters. The legal index lists an addendum party: *Clara Vance*."
The puzzle of my childhood suddenly fractured. The locked room on the third floor of the ancestral manor that was always kept sealed; the second set of silver cutlery that was never brought out; the quiet, suffocating guilt that had haunted my mother until the day she died.
"Where is she?" I demanded, stepping into the operative's personal space.
May you like
"At the clockmaker's shop on Münstergasse," he said. "She has the second half of the key. Without her, the Vaduz trust will purge itself permanently at midnight."
***
