Chapter 18 - The Vault Beneath The Elbe
At 11:00 a.m., Klaus guided Mark and me down into the subterranean vault complex built beneath the stone foundations of the Weber castle.
The vault sat fifty feet below the Elbe River, sealed by a massive ten-ton steel door equipped with biometric and keycard security locks.
Mark used his newly registered biometric scan to disengage the heavy internal deadbolts, which opened with a loud, hydraulic hiss.
Inside sat rows of high-security server racks, stacks of physical gold bullion, and a central glass display case holding historic corporate charters.
Mark stepped up to the central glass case, using his master key to unlock the frame, reaching inside to pull out a black leather binder.
Inside were the original founding documents of Weber Global Logistics from 1948, along with a secondary set of sealed diplomatic files.
As Mark opened the secondary file, a small silver flash drive slipped out from between the pages, falling onto the glass table surface.
I picked up the flash drive, plugging it into my encrypted tablet to review its contents while Mark examined the paper documents.
My breath caught in my throat as three hundred encrypted video files appeared on my tablet screen, labeled with dates spanning thirty years.
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The video files weren't corporate records or financial ledgers; they were high-definition surveillance recordings of international political figures.
Baron Friedrich Weber hadn't just been running a maritime shipping company; he had been operating a global blackmail syndicate for three decades.
