Chapter 194. The Siege

The sterile police bunker was no longer safe. The revelation of the Cho compromise meant every system, every protocol tied to Anton’s old world was potentially poisoned. The Swiss authorities, mortified by the security breach in their crown jewel event, insisted on moving him to a "neutral, undisclosed location." It was a euphemism for a gilded cage they controlled completely.

Anton fought it. “Sabatine comes with me.”

Inspector Gauer was adamant. “Protocol, Herr Rogers. The security detachment is Swiss Federal Police only until the threat landscape is reassessed. Your man will be debriefed and can rejoin you once the location is secured.”

It was a logical, professional separation. It was also exactly the kind of division the Portraitist would anticipate and exploit. To argue too vehemently would seem like the “unhealthy dependence” their leaked narrative had portrayed. They had to play the part, even now.

Sabatine gave a barely perceptible nod to Anton. Go. I’ll find you.

With a last, burning look, Anton was ushered out by a phalanx of stone-faced police officers, leaving Sabatine in the buzzing command centre with Leon and a frustrated Gauer.

“Your weapon,” Gauer said, holding out a hand for Sabatine’s backup pistol. “You will be taken to a secure holding facility for questioning.”

This was the move. Isolate the protector, disorient the principal. Sabatine handed over the pistol, his face a mask of cold cooperation. “I need to contact my second, Leon, to coordinate our intelligence with yours.”

Gauer agreed, but under supervision. As Sabatine and Leon were escorted out of the command post towards a waiting armoured van, they had thirty seconds of semi-privacy in a concrete loading bay.

“They’ll take him to the Vert de Gris,” Leon muttered, naming the most secretive of Geneva’s diplomatic safe houses, a former private bank turned high-security bunker. “It’s a fortress. But it’s also a known entity. If they had Cho’s access, they might have its protocols too.”

“We need to be inside,” Sabatine said, his mind racing. “But we can’t chase him. That’s what they expect. They’ll have a welcome party waiting.” He looked at Leon. “The summit delegates. Where are they being held?”

“Lockdown protocol. They’ve been moved to the attached Hotel President for secure holding until the situation is clarified. It’s a five-star prison right now.”

A hotel full of the world’s most powerful, terrified people. A chaotic, high-value environment. The perfect place for a secondary, spectacular strike if the primary assassination failed. Or the perfect place to draw the protector’s attention.

“That’s the play,” Sabatine said as the van doors were opened for them. “They separate Anton, send him to a hard target. Then they hit the soft target—the delegates. Cause mass casualty chaos, blame it on the ‘rogue security’ or the ‘unstable billionaire.’ The narrative collapse would be total.”

He made a decision. As the van began to move, not towards a holding facility but, as he suspected, on a circuitous route to waste time, he tapped a pre-arranged pattern on his wrist—a distress signal to Maya.

Two minutes later, the van was rocked by a sudden, shocking impact. Not an explosion—a deliberate, brutal sideswipe from a large delivery truck at an intersection. The van spun, tires screaming, and slammed into a lamppost.

In the chaos of crumpling metal and shattering glass, Sabatine and Leon acted. They were expecting the crash; the drivers were not. As the dazed police escorts fumbled with seatbelts and radios, Sabatine and Leon used the emergency tools sewn into their clothing to pop the van’s rear doors and spilled out into the smoky, chaotic street.

“Go!” Leon hissed, shoving Sabatine towards the dense crowd of confused onlookers and first responders already converging. “I’ll handle this. Get to the hotel!”

Sabatine melted into the crowd, stripping off his torn jacket, becoming just another shocked bystander. He moved with purpose, heading not away from the crisis, but towards its heart: the Hotel President, looming like a tiered wedding cake a block from the Palexpo.

The hotel was under siege by fear. Police cordons blocked every entrance. Ambulances and armoured vehicles sat with lights flashing. Inside, he knew, would be a scene of barely contained panic—three hundred captives of circumstance, each with their own security, all trapped together.

He used the service entrance, flashing a summit security badge he’d palmed during the chaos at the Palexpo—a low-level badge, but enough to get him past the harried police line at the loading dock. Inside, the opulent marble and gilt lobby was a surreal contrast to the terror. Delegates clustered in anxious knots, aides argued with overwhelmed hotel managers, private security details stood with hands on hidden weapons, eyeing each other with mutual suspicion.

Sabatine moved through the crowd, his senses stretched thin. He wasn't looking for a shooter here; he was looking for the catalyst. The Portraitist’s tool in a room like this wouldn't be a gun. It would be a rumor. A panic button pressed at the wrong time. A staged act of violence that would turn the trapped, powerful herd into a stampede.

He saw her near the grand staircase. Dr. Silvia Reinhart.

She wasn't hiding. She was impeccably dressed in a tailored cream suit, standing calmly, observing the crowd like a naturalist watching an ant colony. She held a tablet, but her eyes were on the people, noting the rising tension, the fraying edges. She was conducting the symphony of fear.

Their eyes met across the crowded lobby. There was no shock in her gaze, only a cold, academic recognition. She had anticipated this too. That the protector would come to where the flock was gathered, drawn by the instinct to guard the many when the one was taken from him.

A shrill, electronic scream tore through the air—the fire alarm, brutally loud. Then the lights flickered and died, plunging the vast lobby into near darkness, broken only by the emergency exit signs and the glow of hundreds of phone screens.

Shouts of panic erupted. The crowd surged.

This was it. The catalyst. In the dark, in the confusion, people would fall, be trampled. A stampede in a confined space with only a few exits. A massacre.

Sabatine didn't go for Reinhart. He couldn't reach her through the suddenly thrashing crowd. Instead, he lunged for the concierge desk, vaulting over it. He found the main hotel PA microphone, its battery backup light still glowing.

He didn't identify himself. He used a voice of absolute, drill-sergeant command, a tone that cut through the screaming like a blade.

“THIS IS SECURITY! STOP MOVING! STOP NOW!”

The sheer, shocking authority in the voice, amplified through the lobby’s speakers, caused a hiccup in the panic. People froze, confused.

“Emergency lighting in thirty seconds! I need everyone to sit down. Right where you are. ON THE FLOOR. If you are standing, you are a target. SIT DOWN!”

He repeated it, a relentless, calming hammer of words. “Sit down. Protect your head. Help is coming. SIT. DOWN.”

He saw it work, in patches. A cluster of delegates dropped to the polished marble. Another group followed. The surge lost its momentum, breaking into confused eddies. The stampede was still a hair-trigger away, but it was stalled.

In the dim glow, he saw Reinhart watching him, a faint, disappointed frown on her lips. Her plan to engineer chaotic slaughter was foiled. But she wasn't done. She raised her tablet, typed a command.

Across the lobby, a man screamed—a raw, genuine sound of agony. A delegate from a Middle Eastern oil consortium clutched his chest, collapsing. His security detail erupted, shouting, guns drawn, convinced it was an attack.

Perfect. She had switched tactics. From mass panic to targeted, credible violence. Now the armed security details would start shooting at shadows, at each other. The bloodbath would begin.

Sabatine was already moving, not towards the collapsed man, but through the crouching crowd towards the hotel’s main power junction box he’d noted on his way in. He couldn't stop a heart attack, but he could stop the signal.

He reached the panel, ripped the cover off, and in the dark, by feel, yanked the main breaker for the lobby’s emergency systems.

The exit signs died. The PA went silent. The lobby was plunged into utter, profound blackness.

In the absolute dark, the second scream was cut off. The drawn guns were useless. No one could see to shoot.

And into that silence, Sabatine shouted again, his voice a beacon in the void. “NOBODY MOVE! THE POWER IS OUT! THE EXITS ARE SEALED! ANYONE WHO MOVES WILL BE DETAINED! STAY ON THE FLOOR!”

In the dark, control was perception. He had just claimed control.

He heard Reinhart’s voice then, cool and close in the blackness, meant only for him. “Very good, Mr. Stalker. You protect the flock beautifully. But the wolf isn't here. He’s already inside the shepherd’s pen.”

The words were a knife to his heart. Anton. The Vert de Gris. The “fortress.” She had never intended the hotel to be the primary target. It was a diversion. To pull the protector away, to leave the principal “safely” locked down with guards who might have been pre-positioned, bought.

The siege wasn't here. It was wherever Anton was.

In the pitch-black lobby, surrounded by three hundred terrified souls, Sabatine stood frozen, the horrifying truth dawning. He had played his part perfectly. He had protected the many. And in doing so, he might have left the one to die.

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