Chapter 38 Moving Faster
The meeting between Victor Cole and Gerald Fitch had taken place in a private members club on the north side of the city.
Seline had the location from a credit card transaction connected to one of Cole's known accounts, cross-referenced against entry records she had obtained through a contact at the building's management company who owed her a professional favour from three years ago. The confirmation was solid. Cole had been inside the building for two hours and fourteen minutes four days ago and Fitch's name appeared in the guest register under an alias that Seline had connected to him through a hotel booking from two years prior that used the same invented identity.
Zara read through Seline's report at seven in the morning and understood immediately what it meant.
Fitch was not running. He was managing.
A man who was running did not meet his lawyer in a private members club four days after a coordinated international investigation had been formally opened against him. A man who was running moved money and changed locations and reduced his exposure. Fitch was doing something different. He was meeting with the person who had been the legal foundation of his operation for sixteen years and he was doing it in a place he considered safe and he was doing it because he believed he still had options.
That belief was going to be his most costly mistake.
She called Miriam Osei at seven-fifteen.
Miriam answered with the alert efficiency of someone who had been at their desk for at least an hour already.
Zara told her about the meeting. About Victor Cole and the credit card transaction and the guest register and the alias connected to Fitch through the hotel booking from two years ago. She told her about Mercer and Cole advising both sides of the Mensah transaction simultaneously and about the nine acquisitions connected to the firm across thirteen years.
Miriam listened without interrupting.
When Zara finished there was a brief silence.
"Victor Cole," Miriam said. "Is he still in active practice."
"Solo practice with almost no public profile," Zara said. "Seline believes he is still providing active legal support to Fitch's operation despite the firm's dissolution three years ago."
"Then he is not just a historical connection," Miriam said. "He is a current participant."
"Yes," Zara said. "And the meeting four days ago suggests Fitch is using him to prepare a response to the investigation."
Another brief silence. The specific silence of someone making a decision.
"I am going to request an urgent meeting with the international coordination team this morning," Miriam said. "The Cole connection changes the scope of the domestic proceedings significantly. If he is providing active legal support to Fitch while under potential investigation himself we have grounds to move considerably faster than the original timeline."
"How fast," Zara said.
"End of this week if the coordination team agrees," Miriam said. "Possibly sooner."
Zara ended the call and stood at the window of the twenty-second floor and looked at the city below. End of this week. Four days. Against a man who had spent seventeen years making himself invisible and who was currently sitting in a private members club believing he still had options.
Kofi arrived at eight with the focused energy of someone who had not slept well and had used the sleeplessness productively.
"I found Victor Cole's current client list," he said. He set a printed document on her desk. "Three active clients. All three connected to Fitch's network through subsidiaries Seline has already mapped."
She looked at the list.
"He dissolved the firm but kept the clients," she said.
"The ones that mattered," Kofi said. "The ones connected to the operation."
She sat down and looked at the document and thought about the architecture of what Fitch had built. The supplier networks. The acquisition vehicles. The legal infrastructure on both sides of every transaction. The nominee directors cycling through registered addresses in privacy jurisdictions. The aliases used for hotel bookings and club registers and everything else that needed a name without needing to be traceable.
Seventeen years of construction. Thirteen families. A legal ecosystem designed to survive scrutiny because it had been built by someone who understood scrutiny from the inside.
And at the centre of it a man who had spent seventeen years refining his invisibility and who four days ago had sat in a private members club and believed he was still managing the situation.
Seline arrived at eight-thirty with her laptop already open and went directly to her desk without greeting anyone, which was her way of communicating that she had something and wanted to present it properly before she said anything about it.
Zara waited.
At eight forty-five Seline looked up.
"Fitch has begun moving assets," she said. "In the last seventy-two hours. Small movements. Careful. The kind of redistribution that looks like routine portfolio management if you are not watching for it." She turned her screen toward Zara. "But I am watching for it."
Zara looked at the screen.
"How much," she said.
"Enough to matter," Seline said. "If he completes the redistribution before the preservation orders are fully in place in all jurisdictions some of it will be beyond reach."
"How long before the orders are complete," she said.
"Two jurisdictions confirmed," Seline said. "Two still pending. The pending ones are the ones he is moving toward."
Zara looked at the wall. At Gerald Fitch's name at the top of everything with its lines running down through thirteen families and seventeen years.
She picked up her phone and called Damien.
He answered on the first ring.
"The parallel applications in the two pending jurisdictions," she said. "I need them accelerated. Today. Not end of week. Today."
A pause. Brief and decisive.
"I will make the calls in the next ten minutes," he said.
"Thank you," she said.
"Zara," he said before she could end the call.
"Yes."
"We are not going to let him move it," he said. "Not a single account."
She looked at the wall.
"No," she said. "We are not."