If you don't drop the federal grand jury indictment against War Supplies Corporation by midnight, your niece won't leave this precinct alive, the police officer whispered, pressing his service re...
The fluorescent hum of the Department of Justice laboratory was usually a source of quiet satisfaction for me, the place where cold facts emerged from chaos. Today, it felt like an interrogation room.
Special Agent Marcus Brody, head of my Federal Marshal task force, stood over a gleaming steel counter. He wore a crisp white lab coat over his uniform, his brow furrowed in concentration.
On the counter, under a bright, focused beam of light, lay the confiscated Hershey’s Tropical Ration bar. The packaging, slightly crinkled, showed the familiar branding and a stark warning about its high caloric content for soldiers.
“Anything, Marcus?” I asked, my voice tight.
Brody carefully nudged a small, brown flake with a pair of tweezers. “We’re running spectrographic analysis on the cocoa content now, Arthur. But I’ve already confirmed one thing.”
He pointed to a faint, almost invisible stamp on the wrapper’s inner fold, magnified under a small microscope.
“See that? A ‘WDX’ stamp. Faint, but it’s there.”
I leaned closer, my eyes straining. “WDX? What does that mean?”
“War Department Export,” Brody explained, straightening up. “It’s a specific designation for high-grade, high-concentration cocoa product. Not for general domestic consumption or even standard military base stores.”
He paused, letting the implication sink in.
“This chocolate,” he continued, his voice grim, “is manufactured for extreme environments. Think jungle operations, high-altitude missions. It’s part of a top-secret supply chain, Arthur. Stored in specialized, heavily guarded War Production Board warehouses before overseas shipment.”
My jaw clenched. “So, this isn’t something Clara could have ‘stolen’ from a corner store, or even a regular PX.”
“Absolutely not,” Brody confirmed. “This particular batch, marked for export, would be under the direct supervision of War Department appraisers. Men like Oswald Gable.”
The name hit me. Oswald Gable. The War Department appraiser whose signature I’d seen on several questionable supply contracts related to War Supplies Corporation—the very company I was investigating.
“Gable,” I murmured, the pieces clicking into place with a horrifying precision. “He’s connected to War Supplies Corporation. Certifies their shipments.”
“Exactly,” Brody said, his gaze meeting mine. “This chocolate wasn’t just planted. It was planted specifically to link Clara to a high-level military theft. A theft that could only originate from a secure depot. A depot that War Supplies Corporation, with Gable’s help, might have access to.”
He gestured to the bar. “This isn’t about petty larceny, Arthur. This is about a direct, undeniable link between your niece’s arrest and the very heart of the war-profiteering syndicate you’re trying to indict.”
The air suddenly felt colder. Clara, my innocent Clara, was not just a pawn in a blackmail scheme. She was being used as a direct, fabricated evidentiary link to a massive federal crime.
Tommy had gone far beyond simply intimidating me. He was actively trying to implicate my family in federal espionage.
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