Page 17 of Mr. and Mrs. Novak

First red flag: a customs seizure in Istanbul, eight months ago. A container declared as "high-tech medical equipment" actually contained sophisticated tactical military gear.

The declaring company?

A ghost entity based in Dubai, linked to Nexora Trade through a clever setup of three intermediary firms.

I track the technical trail.

Nexora Trade’s main servers are heavily secured, but their external service providers have vulnerabilities. Within my already secure environment, I spot an obsolete subdomain—a remnant of their old infrastructure.

Negligence or trap?

I analyze cautiously.

The system is still active but poorly monitored. Encrypted files pile up, protected by basic authentication. I deploy a passive analysis script, disguising myself as an internal maintenance routine.

A sudden auto-ping makes me pause.

Someone is still watching this entry.

I immediately disconnect.

Good call—barely a fraction of a second later, their security systems trigger. But my traces are already erased.

Still, I managed to extract a fragment of a file: recent maritime manifests. I cross-check them with our customs database.

A shady Nexora Trade subsidiary pops up—Atlantic Wave.

A container en route from Istanbul to Marseille, declared as 'medical equipment.' It's the same pattern as the Turkish seizure.

I’ve just identified a suspicious container.

I immediately compose an encrypted message to Pedro, my customs contact. Though we don’t work together often, we’ve collaborated on sensitive cases before. He only knows me by my alias: Sierra.

I go through the standard protocol—an encrypted message on the secure channel dedicated to priority alerts.

"Container NXRA-7845-19B

Transit: Istanbul → Marseille

Dates: 04/08 - 04/20

Operator: Atlantic Wave

Flag: Panama

Alert: Suspicious content - Similar to seizure T-458

Recommendation: Priority inspection."

I hit send and start waiting. The ball is in his court now.

At noon, we head down to the cafeteria in the basement. Like the rest of the building, the place is secure, but the atmosphere is more relaxed.

I spot Charlie and his team of analysts already seated. They wave us over to join them. Officially, we're not supposed to know what they're working on. Unofficially, we're securing their systems.

We sit down with our trays, and the conversation naturally drifts to mundane topics. Vacations, current TV series, latest restaurants tried. Everyone plays along, like a tacit pact to set aside our responsibilities, if only for an hour.

After lunch comes my favorite part of the day. We all go down a floor to the recreation room: four hundred square meters of modular space that we transform according to our whims. Today, it'll be a Nerf battle.