At the very same moment, in a wooden cabin in Alesund, Norway, Liam stared at his laptop screen, his eyes bloodshot. He had been working for eight consecutive hours, and the coffee pot had run dry for the second time.
The encrypted forum of the Pure Eye organization ran deeper than he had anticipated. On the surface, it was an art philosophy discussion board, where members debated the "purity of art," the "corruption of commercialization," and the "spiritual dimension of cultural heritage." But delving further, Liam uncovered a hidden layer of communication embedded in the metadata of image files—using an ancient book cipher, with specific page and line numbers from art history texts serving as the key.
His prison experience proved unexpectedly useful at this moment. Inside, Marco had ta
