Chapter 8
A Glimmer of Hope
Lina finds a potential ally: Elena Jankauskienė, a weary Sodra employee conflicted by her conscience. Elena observes the suspicious financial dealings from within.
The air in the Sodra building, usually thick with the drone of photocopiers and the murmur of officialdom, seemed to hum with a different kind of energy today. Lina, hunched over a worn notebook in a quiet corner of the cafeteria, felt it like a prickle on her skin. It was the feeling of secrets, of hushed conversations and averted gazes. She’d been observing, a fly on the wall in this beige labyrinth, piecing together fragments of overheard whispers and furtive glances.
Her focus, however, was fixed on one particular individual: Elena Jankauskienė. Elena was a woman carved from quiet anxiety. Her shoulders seemed perpetually slumped, as if carrying the weight of the world, or perhaps just the immense burden of her job. Lina had noticed her in the finance department, a place Lina rarely ventured, but had managed to gain access to under the guise of a follow-up question about pension regulations. Elena’s hands, usually busy with stacks of paper, would tremble slightly when a certain official, a man named Vytautas Kazlauskas, passed by her desk. Her eyes, a soft, tired blue, would dart away, feigning an urgent task.
Lina had spent the better part of the morning subtly observing Elena. She’d seen her pause by the notice board, not to read the official announcements, but to furtively glance at a small, almost imperceptible smudge of ink near the bottom of a memo. It was the same smudge Lina had noticed on the coded message she'd first discovered. A tiny detail, perhaps, but to Lina’s trained eye, it was a breadcrumb.
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