Chapter 206: Reforging the Inner Circle

The hotel room in Geneva was a beige monument to anonymity, a world away from the sumptuous suites he normally occupied. The air was thick with the scent of industrial cleaner and stale coffee. It was exactly as it should be. From the third-floor window, he could see a car park and the side of an equally unremarkable building. There was no glamour here, no legacy. A clean slate—it was just what he required.

Leon had already returned before dawn with a thin, locked briefcase. It contained the passports and documents necessary for life as Leon and Sabatine. These included two Estonian e-residence cards, driver’s licenses, credit cards with low credit limits, and biographical cards. Their passport photos depicted a hard and tired Anton—he looked as if he hadn’t slept in weeks, with darkened hair that looked slightly lighter, and glasses—and a Sabatine with a buzz cut and a scar dividing his eyebrow, courtesy of some excellent special effects makeup. They were “Martin Lepp” and “Andrus Kask,” insignificant partners at a Tallinn investment capital firm called “Nordic Spark.” Their biography included a beautiful and tedious mélange of facts gathered from Leon and Sarah: actual business records and taxation statements from two years before, and some carefully maintained online presence suggesting they'd attended dull conventions and posed for boring vacation photos. The forger, as he'd assured Leon, was an artist.

But the papers were no more than the outside casing. It was internal work that began the next morning. Anton stood in the small room with a pained shoulder he chose to bear. Sabatine and Leon waited.

“The inner circle is compromised,” Anton said, with a voice muffled as if an echo against lesser furniture. “Evelyn, Marcus, my entire security detail at my London operation—are they a tool I can employ, or a gun aimed at me. I can’t sever them with an e-mail. I have a new structure to build. Now.”

“I'm counting on you, Leon.” He turned to Leon. “You have operational field experience, I don't. You have resources, contacts that aren’t in my corporate directory. I need you to be my interim head of security. Not just a driver. A commander.”

Leon didn’t blink. Just a single, slow nod. “Understood. The perimeter of this operation is my responsibility. Physical movement, counter-surveillance, extraction points in case the villa goes hot.” But then he paused. “But you are going to need more than a perimeter. You are going to need an immune system. Something that will proactively seek out the cancer within your own data streams, something that will predict Kaine’s cyber moves.”

Anton's eyes turned to Sabatine. “I know.”

A familiar resentment swelled. Command. A sense of responsibility for more than himself. It was what he had been running from. “Anton, my abilities are. unique. I operate better alone, in stealth. I'm no leader. I'm a scalpel.”

“I don’t need a manager,” Anton said, taking a step closer. The tension between them throbbed with unspoken moments—the bullet, the burned warning, the touch in the dark. “I need a strategist who understands my enemy because he’s walking in the same darkness. I need someone who can examine the shattered remains of my online defenses and not see ruin, but instead a plan for a more impenetrable fortress. I need you, Sabe, to be my Security Director. Not as a formality. As a fact. As we stand here, today.”

The title existed as a shadow, as nothing without the empire it represented. And yet it meant everything. It represented trust. Trust born out of fire and cemented. It represented Anton giving him the keys to the last remaining fortress – safety.

“You’re putting your life into the hands of a man your whole board considers a traitor,” said Sabatine, a taste of old guilt bitter on her tongue.

“I put my life in the hands of the only man who’s proven, beyond ideology or paycheck, that he cares about it,” Anton argued, staring unflinchingly. “The board doesn’t count here. Rogers Industries doesn’t exist here. All that exists here is this. Us. And the danger. Will you lead the defense?”

Sabatine's eyes shifted from Anton's determined expression to Leon's eager one. It was the family he had never intentionally created but, instead, had been forged under duress. It was something he couldn’t outrun. Not anymore. With a slow breath, he let all of his lone hold on it drift away with the exhale.

“Good. But we do it my way. No corporate structure. A cell. A triad. You,” he nodded at Anton, “are the objective. The asset and intelligence source. You know who the players are, the background, the corporate politics. Leon is the shield, muscle, and eyes on the street. I am the sword and locksmith. I do the cyber intrusion, signals intelligence analysis, and mental portraits of Kaine. We share it all. No exceptions. A secret among two is an opening for three.”

A ghost of a smile flickered on Anton’s lips. It was the first real smile that Sabatine had seen from Anton since London. “Agreed.”

During the next six hours, the beige room became a war room. They pushed the twin beds against the walls and made use of Leon’s secure staplink. From there, they were able to tap into a ghost server that Sabatine had set up. It would be an arduous task, but they began working on reversing Anton’s empire.

“Start with the innocents,” he ordered, typing rapidly at a laptop. “Who in your London office had no access to the prototype project, no direct reporting line to Evelyn, and a verifiable alibi for the night of the theft?”

Anton, leaning on his shoulder, began listing names. A young analyst in Tokyo. The head of their philanthropic foundation in Nairobi. The head of HR, a strict woman named Marjorie who had once threatened to quit due to an incident involving an ethics violation. One by one, Sabatine began to construct a small network of potentially clean.

“It’s not enough,” Leon growled, watching a feed of the car park. “We need active allies. Someone with access who can act.”

Anton rubbed his forehead. “There’s only one person remaining who will be able to access these core servers without triggering an immediate flag on Evelyn’s traps. That would be my General Counsel, Jessica Abara.”

But he knew the name. Jessica Abara was a legend at corporate law. She was a woman who had upheld Rogers Industries in three global lawsuits. She was a fiercely private, unyielding, and loyal woman, with a lifelong devotion to the memory of Anton’s own father. But Jessica Abara was also a woman who, as Anton had briefed her on Evelyn before, was very leery of Evelyn’s meteoric rise.

“Can she be trusted?” Sabatine asked, and there was no subtlety

"'She loved my father like a brother. She regards me as the son she never had, but would rather die than admit it,' Anton said. ‘But her first loyalty is to the firm, and to the law. If she thinks I have become an obstacle for her or have violated the law, then she will turn against me herself. We have to bring her around.’"

‘That’s a risk. One call from her to the wrong person…’

“It’s the only risk that leads to a chance of winning,” Anton replied. He turned to Sabatine. “Can you get me a secure, untraceable line to her? A video feed that will let her know it’s from me, but not be interceptable by Kaine?”

“I'm already on my feet. I can get you a twenty-minute window. It'll be encrypted and piggybacked on a live news satellite feed out of Burkina Faso. It will appear as a glitch on any surveillance they might be running. But Anton. you have twenty minutes to turn the most cautious lawyer in Europe into an accomplice.”

An hour passed, and it was ready. Anton sat on a hard-backed chair with a blank wall behind him. Sabatine had set up the lighting so that it put his face in strong relief. That made Anton's paleness stand out, as well as dark circles under his eyes and traces of pain. But there was no hesitation in his stance, and he looked directly at the lens.

“And then you have to remember,” he said, his finger poised over the connect key, “that you’re not seeking help. You’re offering evidence and giving an order to your General Counsel. You have to convey leadership, not victimhood.”

Anton nodded tightly. “Do it.”

The screen flickered, and Jessica Abara appeared. She was in what looked like a home library, with shelves full of leather-bound books at her back. She was a senior woman, possibly in her late sixties. She had short, silver hair and eyes that missed nothing. She was wearing a severe burgundy sweater. Jessica looked at Edwin with no surprise, but with an intense concern.

“Anton.” The voice was like a gravelly voice talking with a layer of smooth, black velvet. “They’re claiming you have a sudden medical leave. Evelyn’s giving very soothing, very reassuring updates. My teeth are literally loosening.”

“It’s a coup, Jessica,” Anton began with no delay. “Evelyn Voss, working together with Marcus and a hired gun named Elias Kaine, stole the Aegis. Voss shot me when I confronted her. As we speak, I am based in Geneva with an assumed name tracking it before it’s sold to people who will use it against governments.”

It was as if he were delivering a quarterly report, factual and unemotional. Jessica's face remained unchanged, but her eyes froze, like a predator before it pounced.

“Evidence,” she demanded.

“And transmit it all to your private server,” Anton said. From his own terminal, Sabatine entered the command sequence for uploading encoded transfers. “The passkey is the date of my father’s funeral, followed by the name of his favourite racehorse.”

Jessica's hands were outside the frame, presumably on a tablet. She sifted through the information, her face darkening with each passing moment. It took three minutes for her to turn back to the camera.

“This is disastrous,” she said. “And you’ve brought in a private investigator with a … questionable background.” She glanced at someone out of frame – she could see Sabatine’s profile on her end.

„Sabatine Stalker discovered the plot and got framed for it. As we speak, he is the only reason I am still alive. I have assigned him as my Security Director for an operation.”

Jessica's eyebrows rose pointedly. It was the equivalent of shouting with surprise. Jessica examined Anton's face on her screen. She looked for coercion, looked for madness. What she saw apparently steadied her.

“What do you need?” It was so Jessica. Once they understood the facts, Jessica took action.

‘Two things. First, a legal quarantine. Use your position to put Evelyn and her direct reports on immediate administrative leave, based on a confidential internal audit. Put them out of reach without giving them any indication we’re aware of what they’re doing. Can you manage that without her becoming suspicious?’

A faint, chilly smile flirted with Jessica’s mouth. “I’ve wanted an excuse to audit her department for eighteen months. It’s been done. She’ll blame it on a Legal power play, not your warning. And the second thing?”

“Access. I need you to be our inside man. A guaranteed pipeline. There will be communication procedures provided by Sabatine. You get us anything that moves in London—response from the board, change on the security shifts, anything that mentions Geneva or myself. And be ready with your legal blitz once we have possession of it physically as an artifact so we may retake control of the company from under Evelyn’s control.”

Jessica stood there in silence for a moment. She was torn between her obligations to the corporation and her loyalty to the man that his father had been and who Anton was clearly striving to be. She was passing a point of no return.

“Anton,” she said, her voice softening a degree. “Your father… in his last days, he was afraid you were too soft. Too trusting. I told him he was wrong. I told him your strength was in building, not in walling yourself off.” She took a deep breath. “It seems I was both right and wrong. You built, and they betrayed that. But you are not hiding. You are fighting for it. That, he would understand.”

She smoothed her sweater. The moment of sentiment passed. “Send me your protocols, Mr. Stalker. I am, after all, a part of this… inner circle. But let me make myself perfectly clear. I will be watching. And failing. And if this fails and this company goes down, my resignation will be on your desk before the headlines hit. And I will bring you with me. To save what’s left of its integrity.”

Anton’s appreciation for her sincere answer was evident. “Perfectly, Jessica. Thank you.”

“Do not thank me. Just win.” The screen faded black. The link broken, silence fell once more on the room.

Anton slumped back against the chair, exhausted from the effort he put forth. A breath escaped Sabatine’s chest that he hardly noticed he had been holding. “She approves,” Anton murmured, a hint of awe in his voice. “She more than approves,” Sabatine corrected, a reluctant admiration creeping into his own voice. “She just committed professional treason for you. She’s your queen on the board now. A formidable one.” Leon, from his position, let out a low chuckle. “Remind me never to get on her bad side.” The circle had been remade. No longer about silk and old money, but about steel and necessity. A driver became a commander, a lawyer an espionage specialist, a disgraced investigator a director, and a billionaire a fugitive revolutionary. It would be precarious, illegitimate, and forged in fire. Anton surveyed the two men with him in this room. But he also remembered the fiery woman who had joined forces with them on the other side of the screen. The burden of leadership still rested on his shoulders, but it no longer made him feel alone. That burden had been shared, and it rested on a fresh and broken but stronger platform. 

“Okay,” he said, hauling himself upwards, the glint appearing once more in his eye. “The inner circle is secured. Now let's crash an auction.”

—--