Chapter 18: Betrayal Framed

The thudding on the safe house door was not a request. It was a series of staccato, hammer-like blows that shook the frame, the noise of institutional might not to be defied.

Anton sprang to his feet in an instant, his muscles tense. Sabe, who had been drifting in a stunned haze on the sofa, lifted his head slowly. Their look was a universe of understanding. The news break was the preliminary assault. This was a big attack.

"Geneva Police! Open the door!" came a voice in English-inflected French.

Anton adjusted his jacket, a futile attempt to retake command. He opened the door.

Two plainclothes detectives stood there, their faces etched in professional impassivity. In the background, four uniforms lined the hallway. The senior detective, a man with a grey beard trimmed close to his chin and eyes the colour of a winter sky, raised a leather wallet that held his badge and a folded paper.

"I am Inspector Deschamps. We have a warrant for Sabatine Stalker's arrest," he stated, his tone unfeeling and professional. His eyes flashed past Anton, landing on Sabe, who had risen from the couch.

"On what charges?" Anton's tone was ice, the CEO shield springing back into place once more.".

"Suspicion of industrial sabotage, arson, theft of intellectual property, and conspiracy to commit fraud," Deschamps read aloud. He unfolded the warrant, holding it out for Anton to examine. It was dense with legalese, but the words Sabatine Stalker leaped out in bold, accusatory black.

"This is ridiculous," Anton said. "He is my security chief. He saved my life."

The facts would say differently, Mr. Rogers," Deschamps told him, never looking away from Sabe. "Mr. Stalker, face around and put your hands behind you."

Sabe stood stock-still. This was the most awful instant he had ever feared, the ghost of his past resurrected in a strange police station. The embarrassment of the public headline was one thing; the raw, physical reality of handcuffs another.

"Not a word, Sabe," Anton commanded, his tone cold and harsh. "Not a word. My attorneys are already making their way down to the station." His glinting eyes shifted to Deschamps. "You are making an epic error. This is a frame-up by the real culprits."

Deschamps did not blink. He jerked his head curtly at one of the uniforms. "Mr. Stalker. Now."

The world ground, shattered into a series of brutal, discrete images. The cold flash of the handcuffs drawing out. The harsh pressure of the hard metallic bands clamping around his wrists, the click a harsh, locking sound that rang out to entomb his fate. The clinical fingers patting him down for weapons. The uniformed men alongside him, their hands firm on his arms.

He looked over at Anton as they dragged him off. Anton's face was twisted into a tense, furrowed mask of furious, desperate intensity. "I'll get you out!" he vowed. "Do you hear me? I'll make it right!

Sabe trusted him. And the worst part was that. For the evidence, he knew, it wouldn't be circumstantial. Marcus was too systematic. Evelyn was too smart. They wouldn't have acted without a body of evidence that would look, to any objective observer, absolutely convincing.

The station was a blur of fluorescent lights, echoing corridors, and the smell of stale coffee and disinfectant. He was booked, fingerprinted, and sat down in a clean windowless interrogation room. He held onto Anton's directive like a lifeline. Not one word.

He did not have much time to wait. Inspector Deschamps entered, followed by a younger woman detective. They took seats on the other side of the metal table from him, laying down a file folder on it. 

"Mr. Stalker, you have the right to remain silent," Deschamps began, reciting the rituals. Since Sabe remained silent, just glaring at him down, the Inspector opened the file.

Let us show it to you," he said, not graceless, but unrelenting precision. "The case that does not involve your rescuing anybody."

He nudged a photograph down the table. It was a close-up of the fire-scorched core console in the server room. There was a smudged, clear fingerprint taken from part of the metal housing that survived.

Your fingerprints, Mr. Stalker. At the primary ignition point of the thermite charge. Placed there after the fire suppression system was deactivated manually from that very console. Explain that.

Sabe's blood ran cold. He had touched that console. When he'd been attempting to establish whether anything could be salvaged, in the fractions of a second before the fire began. They had nicked a moment of frantic possibility and engineered it into deliberate arson.

He said nothing.

Deschamps placed a second document on the table. This was a translation of encrypted emails, pulled from a server traced to a London coffee shop one block from Sabe's apartment.

"Transactions between an encrypted account, registered in your name, and one belonging to a known industrial espionage broker. The messages detail the Rogers prototype schematics and the planned 'extraction' during the fake fire alarm. The timestamps place these exchanges in the days leading up to the fire."

Sabe stared at the printout. It was a bald-faced lie. A perfect, computer-generated ghost story where he was the bad guy. He felt a queasy sense of vertigo. How do you fight a falsehood that has been given the substance and life of facts?

"And then," Deschamps continued, his voice low, "there is the matter of payment."

He pushed the final sheet of paper across the table. A bank statement. A Swiss account, behind a shell company name of lies, had received two million euros the day following the blaze. The account that sent it was a shell, but the electronic paper trail, meticulously mapped in the documentation, traced back to a Cayman Islands bank where Sabe had had a tiny functional account in the early years of his life as a PI. A fund he had forgotten long ago, now produced and sullied by this money.

Two million euros. The price of his conscience, as offered by the evidence.

It was a masterpiece in building. Physical evidence. Electronic evidence. Financial evidence. It all fits together. It was neat, persuasive, and utterly damning. It tied his past—the honorably discharged vet, the sleazy PI—into a future of hitherto unmatched greed and violence.

The female detective broke her silence, her tone gentler, attempting a good-cop connection. "A lot of evidence to dismiss, Sabatine. Maybe you were in over your head. Maybe Rogers wasn't giving you what you were worth. Maybe you saw it and took it. Explain to us. It will be better for you.".

Sabe looked from her sympathetic face to Deschamps's serious one. The walls of the small room appeared to close in, weighing down on him with the intensity of the deceptions. They had their man. The neat story. The down-at-the-heels ex-soldier who finally broke.

He thought of Anton. I think you.

But glancing at the fingerprint, the emails, the bank transfer, a cold splinter of uncertainty pierced his own conviction. What if he was wrong? What if, during some fugue that he couldn't remember, he had…? No. That was insanity. That was what they wanted.

He shut his eyes, closing out the overwhelming proof of his own guilt. He focused on the memory of Anton's face in the safe house, the hug of his arms around him, the unassailable assurance in his voice.

He opened his eyes and looked at Deschamps.

"I have nothing to say," he said to him, his voice rasping but firm. "I want my lawyer."

Deschamps watched him for a long time, then nodded slowly, as if he had been disappointed in some way. He gathered the papers back into the file. For him, the case was over.

"Very well."

They had left him alone in the room. The quiet was absolute, broken only by the hum of the lights and the pounding of his own heart. He was trapped. Not just in this room, but in a narrative so close it was a prison. The proof was a trap, and every bar—the fingerprint, the email, the money—had been constructed from his own past, his own prints, his own carelessness.

He had thought the leaking of the news was the lowest point. He had been wrong. This was the lowest point. This was the sour, bitter, judicial reality of a life sentence.

He lowered his head to the chilly metal table, the handcuffs digging into his wrists. The image of the bank statement burned behind his closed eyes. Two million euros. They had not only charged him with the crime. They had made him a man who would sell his soul for cash. They had stolen his honour, what he had left, and put a price on it.

And in the crushing silence, a new, chilling thought emerged. If the evidence was this perfect, this unassailable… how could even Anton Rogers, with all his wealth and power, ever break him free?

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