Chapter 221: The Decoy Motorcade

The observation deck was a wind-whipped, crystalline cage. A kilometer above the silenced streets, the morning sun was a cold, brilliant coin in a sky scrubbed clean by the night's storm. Geneva lay below like an intricate, frozen model—the snarl of police cordons, the pinprick flashes of emergency lights, the lake a sheet of hammered lead. Up here, the only sound was the low, constant moan of the wind racing up the tower's flanks.

They had the deck to themselves. The public lockdown had ensured it. Anton stood near the towering, floor-to-ceiling windows, the prototype a hard, cold brand against his thigh. Sabatine was a prowling shadow near the service entrance, his senses stretched to the limit, every nerve attuned to the hum of the elevators, the whisper of the stairwell door.

Conceived in the silent shadows of the mechanical room, their scheme was straightforward: proclaim their stance, bait the trap, and make Kaine take them on in a battleground of their choosing—a glass box with no corners to hide in. Anton would be the visible prize. Sabatine would be the unseen blade.

But as the minutes bled into a tense half-hour, with no sign of movement from below, a new, dangerous variable presented itself: time. The authorities on the ground were not static. The lockdown was an active, tightening process. Sooner or later, a police tactical team would be sent to clear the city's tallest landmark. Or Kaine-ever adaptable-would simply wait for the police to deliver his targets to him in cuffs.

They needed to accelerate the endgame. They needed to get Kaine to move now.

It was Anton who observed the pattern in the streets below. He pointed, his finger leaving a faint smudge on the pristine glass. “Look. The police cordons. They’re thickest around the diplomatic quarter and the old town. But the routes to the main highways… they’re lighter. They’re prioritizing containment of the incident zones, not a city-wide siege.”

Sabatine joined him, his eyes following the lines of authority on the ground. "He's still thinking about exfiltration. His bolthole. He needs a path cleared, or a spectacular diversion to punch one open."

A cold, calculated idea began to form in Anton's mind. It was audacious. Reckless. It played directly to Kaine's expectations of how a man like Anton Rogers - a billionaire used to moving in an armoured bubble - would behave when cornered.

“We give him a diversion,” Anton said, his voice low but clear in the cavernous space. “But not a slight one. A grand one. We give him Anton Rogers, fleeing in a panic.”

Sabatine turned to him, his face unreadable. “How?”

“A motorcade,” Anton said, his eyes fixed on the distant route de Meyrin, a grey ribbon leading to France. “A false one. We make him think I’ve lost my nerve. That I’m making a desperate, protected dash for the border, using my remaining resources. You said he reads patterns. What’s the pattern of a terrified executive? He runs. He uses his wealth to buy a corridor.”

Sabatine's mind did the same race as his. "He'd have to divert assets to intercept. To cut off the route. It would pull his focus, thin his presence here."

“Exactly. And while he’s looking at the road, you’ll be here. In the tower he now thinks is empty. You’ll be the trap in the abandoned hive.”

“And you?” Sabatine’s voice was flat as a menace. “You’ll be in that motorcade. A moving target.”

“I’ll be the decoy,” Anton corrected. “But not unprotected. We utilize the tower’s resources. Security here has a garage, maintenance vehicles. We find a van, something anonymous. Leon…” He touched his ear, turning on the comms. “Leon, status.”

Static burst, then Leon's voice came through strained, yet alert: "Alive. Perimeter is a zoo. They've set up a mobile command post two blocks east. What's your play?"

Anton laid it out quickly. The dummy motorcade. The necessity for a plausible vehicle, for a driver who could appear the part.

Leon was silent. “I know a guy. Works valet at the five-star next door. He’s. theatrical. And he owes me. He can get a blacked-out BMW 7-series from the hotel's executive fleet. Looks the part. I can't drive it--my face is too hot. But I can coordinate."

"Do it," Anton said. "We need it staged at the tower's private basement entrance in twenty minutes. Then we need a second vehicle. A maintenance van. For the real move."

“On it.”

He'd been thinking, his tactical mind weighing risk against reward. "The motorcade needs to be seen. It needs to be heard. It can't just sneak away. It has to proclaim itself."

Anton nodded. "We use the police scanner for traffic. A leak. A panicked call from ‘a Rogers security loyalist’ reporting the boss is making a break for it in a black BMW, heading for the French border. Kaine monitors those channels. He’ll hear it."

The plan coalesced with terrifying speed. They went down not to the lobby but to the sub-basement garage via a separate service elevator. The garage was a tomb of concrete pillars and a few parked vehicles, a security SUV, a janitorial cart, and in a reserved spot a plain white van with Tour Genève Maintenance stenciled on the side.

Leon's contact came through: a text, with a photo, a sleek black Bimmer-also a model he recognized-running in a loading bay of the adjacent hotel, young man in chauffeur's cap visible behind the wheel.

It was time to get separated.

In the gloom of the garage, Sabatine prepared Anton for his role. He helped him out of the maintenance coveralls and into a dark, tailored overcoat they’d taken from a lost-and-found locker in the security office. He mussed Anton’s hair, rubbed more grease strategically on his face to simulate sweat and grime in the dim light. He made him look like a man who had been hiding and was now on the brink of flight.

“You get in the BMW,” Sabatine instructed, hands firm on Anton’s shoulders. “You slump in the back. You look defeated. You let yourself be seen. For five blocks, you are the most important thing in Kaine’s world. Then, at the planned intersection, the van will be waiting in a blind spot. You switch. The BMW continues its run with the driver alone, playing the part. You and I go to ground in the van, and we circle back here, to the tower he’ll have just written off.”

Anton clutched Sabatine’s wrists. “And if they won’t take the bait? If they strike the motorcade right away?”

“Then the driver bails at the first sign of trouble. His job is to look paid, not heroic. And I,” Sabatine said, his voice dropping to lethal whisper, “will be on a rooftop two blocks from the switch point. If they move early, I'll know. And I will stop them.”

He slung the captured submachine gun, now with a fresh magazine taken from the tower's security office, across his back. He also put on a long grey workman's coat over it. He looked like a contractor, or a hunter.

It was a physical wrench, a tearing of skin to peel apart after the night and the morning of unity. Anton pulled Sabatine into a brief, crushing kiss-a transfer of resolve. “See you at the switch.”

“At the switch,” Sabatine confirmed.

Anton turned and walked toward the basement entrance where the black BMW now purred, a sleek shark in the shadows. He allowed his posture to sag, the mask of the broken executive settling over him.

Sabatine melted away into the darkness of the garage, exiting via a utility door opening onto a back alley. Scaling a fire escape on the neighbouring building with simian grace, he moved in a fluid, silent rush - amazingly so, considering his hurt state. A few minutes later, he lay prone on a low roof that put him at a clear sightline down the Avenue de la Tour towards the planned switch point. The wind tugged at his coat, and he peered through the scope of a compact monocular.

His world narrowed to a tunnel of vision. He watched the black BMW emerge from the tower's bowels and turn onto the avenue. It moved with deliberate, conspicuous speed, but not a panicked flee. The driver was good. Anton was a vague, slumped shape in the back.

Sabatine's breath stilled. His finger was laid beside the trigger of his weapon, not on it. His eyes were everywhere-scanning the rooflines opposite, the parked vans, the upper windows of the buildings the BMW would pass. He was the unseen guardian, the silent promise of retribution if the bait was struck too soon.

He heard it then, on the police scanner feed piped into his earpiece-the panicked, staticky voice Leon had promised: ".vehicle sighted, black BMW, diplomatic plates possibly fake, heading east on Rue de la Tour. believed to be Rogers. Repeat, Rogers may be attempting to flee."

The call was repeated: the net would be reacting.

And then he saw them. Two nondescript sedans, hitherto parked and dark, suddenly flicked on their lights and pulled out from side streets, falling in behind the BMW with discreet distance. Kaine’s wolves. Taking the bait. Sabatine followed them, his heart a cold, steady drum. The BMW didn't vary in its pace. The sedans mimicked it. They passed his position, on toward the anticipated intersection where the white maintenance van, driven by Leon, would be waiting in a delivery bay. His part was done. The decoy swam, and the sharks followed. 

He slid back from the edge of the roof; his movements were economical. He had to move now, reach the van ahead of its arrival, and be there when Anton made the switch. 

As he worked his way down the fire escape, a cold certainty clamped down over him. The motorcade was fiction, shadow-play. But the danger was hyper-real. He had just sent the man he loved into the open as a target. The rifle on his back felt like the only tangible thing in a world of illusions. 

He hit the ground running, a phantom in the grey morning, his eyes fixed upon the far corner where the future—their future—would be decided in a frantic, clandestine exchange of vehicles and identities. The decoy motorcade rolled on, and Sabatine-the shadow-ran to meet it.

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