Page 138 of The Atlas Maneuver

“Which is why,” Trinity said, “we can’t risk someone acquiring over four and a half million of them.”

“And what would happen if we could reacquire them?” Cotton asked.

“The United States government will keep them,” Trinity said.

COTTON DID NOT LIKE WHAT HE’D JUST HEARD.

That would be the last thing Suzy would have wanted.The whole idea was total and complete independence.That’s what she’d told him two days ago. Now for the government to take control of a quarter of all the bitcoin known to still exist?

That seemed unconscionable.

Bitcoin was Suzy’s legacy. Sadly, he knew little to nothing about her family. That had not been a subject they’d ever explored. He did know she was an only child. He had no idea if her parents were still alive. Her life had to have meaning. She was the creator of blockchain. A brilliant mind. An innovator. Someone who literally changed the world.

And she was blown up.

For what?

Fix it. You have to make it the way I wanted.

“I think I have an answer,” he said.

Cotton followed everyone off the elevator. They’d descended below the ground level into the most secure area of the bank. Where the servers were located, especially an air-gap version that kept the private keys for the online wallets. He’d been introduced to a woman named Kristin Jeanne from the Eidgenössische Finanzmarktaufsicht, the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority. Like the Securities Exchange Commission, federal bank regulators, and FBI all in one.

“I need you to explain to me how this system works,” he said.

“I can’t do that,” Jeanne said, “but we found one of the IT personnel from the bank who can. She explained the situation to me.”

“Okay,” he said. “I’m all ears.”

“And who exactly are you?” Jeanne asked.

“I’m the guy that can solve this problem.”

He caught the glances among Koger, Trinity, and Jeanne, ones that saidHe’s okay, you can trust him.

Jeanne shrugged. “Okay, that server over there is not connected to the internet. It sits alone. On it are the keys to the bank’s 4,556,298.6752 bitcoin. They exist inside 4,312 separate electronic wallets, each protected by an access code. Kelly Austin froze that server with a virus. Once that virus is released then the keys to those wallets will be available once again. They can then be transferred through this desktop here to the internet and the wallets themselves.”

“How do you move them over?”

“With a flash drive,” Jeanne said.

“Can you access the air-gap server?” he asked.

Jeanne stepped back to the door, opened it, and motioned. A younger woman entered and was directed to the chair before the keyboard. “She can.”

The woman started typing and a prompt screen appeared on the monitor asking for the user name and password. The latter he was certain about. The former? Not so much. But Suzy had written the password right under the epigraph. So he went for the obvious. The man who penned the epigraph forA Distant Mirror. John Dryden. And he spelled out the last name.

Which was entered.

“Password?” Jeanne said.

And he repeated what Suzy had written.

Hos730#DF$2936GRVOZX37/?fy%&

Twenty-eight letters, numbers, and symbols.

When everything was entered he double-checked the screen.

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