Chapter 51 Flight Risk

The air in the private hangar at the small, rain-swept airfield outside Rotterdam was thick with the smell of jet fuel and tension. Mac, a stoic silhouette against the grey dawn, handed them two slim, black diplomatic passports and two separate, first-class tickets on commercial airlines to Geneva.

“Separate carriers, separate routes,” Mac grunted, his eyes scanning the misty runway. “You,” he nodded at Sabe, “are on the 10:05 Swiss Air flight via Zurich. You,” his gaze shifted to Anton, “are on the 11:20 Air France direct. Less pattern, less risk. If one flight gets grounded, the other might make it.”

Anton took the passport. It felt flimsy, a lie made of paper and laminate. He flipped it open. His own face stared back, but the name beside it was ‘Alain Roche,’ a ‘cultural attaché’ from a minor European delegation. The man in the photo looked tired, his eyes holding a shadow of the privilege Anton Rogers had once worn so easily. It was disturbingly convincing.

Sabe took his own passport without a word, tucking it into the inside pocket of his dark, functional jacket. He was already ‘Lars Eriksen,’ a Norwegian logistics consultant. The transformation was complete. The man who had shared a whiskey and a shattered confession in a narrowboat was gone, replaced by the operative, his mind clearly already navigating the checkpoints and protocols ahead.

"You know the drill," Sabe said, his voice low, his eyes on Anton but his attention seemingly everywhere at once. "No contact from now until the safe house in Carouge. Use the protocols we discussed if there's trouble. Don't deviate."

It was a command. The type Anton would have bristled at a month ago. Now, he just nodded. “Understood.”

They didn't shake hands. There was no clasp of shoulders. Sabe simply turned and walked towards the terminal building, his bag slung over one shoulder, merging into the stream of early-morning travellers without a backward glance. He was a ghost, dissolving into the daylight.

Anton watched him go, feeling a hollowness open in his chest. Faced with the reality of separation, the pact seemed terrifyingly fragile. He was alone. Truly alone, for the first time since the fire. An hour later, seated in the exclusive calm of the first-class lounge, Anton tried to embody ‘Alain Roche.’ 

He sipped mineral water, flicked through a financial paper he had no interest in, and desperately tried to keep his breathing even. Every uniformed official, every delayed announcement over the tannoy, sent a jolt of adrenaline through him. He was a flight risk in every sense of the word, his nerves stretched taut, ready to bolt. And then he saw him. 

Sabe was across the lounge, seated in a secluded corner near a potted fiddle-leaf fig. He had a newspaper open, but he wasn’t reading it. His head was tilted down, his gaze fixed on a point across the room. Anton. He was watching him. Not with operational assessment, not with the cold scrutiny of a bodyguard weighing up a threat level. His gaze was. different. Softer yet more intense. It was the look from the waltz, from the railway arch, from the narrowboat—a look that saw through ‘Alain Roche’ and all the other masks, right down to the raw, uncertain man beneath. Their eyes met. The hum of the lounge—the clink of china, the murmur of business conversations, the distant whine of a jet engine—seemed to fade into a dull roar. 

The space between them, thirty feet of polished floor and low-slung leather furniture, crackled with a silent, potent energy. It was an unspoken conversation, a thread of pure electricity connecting them in the midst of the crowd. Are you alright? Sabe’s eyes seemed to ask. I'm scared, Anton's answer. A flicker of understanding. 

A slight, almost imperceptible nod. I know. So am I. It was the most intimate exchange they had ever shared. More intimate than the almost-kiss, more profound than the confessions in the dark. It was a naked admission of mutual fear and dependence, passing between them in a crowded room where they were supposed to be strangers. Anton felt a strange calm settle over him. The panic receded, replaced by a warm, steadying certainty. He wasn’t alone. Sabe was right there, a fixed point in his spinning universe, his anchor in the storm. The protectiveness wasn’t just a job; the connection wasn’t just a strategic alliance. It was real. It was humming in the air between them, a live wire neither of them could, or wanted to, cut. Sabe's eyes held him a moment longer, in silent vow. I'm here. I see you. We're in this together. Then, as if the switch had been flipped, Sabe’s gaze dropped back to his newspaper. The connection was severed, the operative’s mask back in place. But the charge remained, simmering in Anton’s veins like a drug. His flight was called. Standing to leave, he didn't look back. He didn't have to. 

He could still feel the weight of that gaze, a tangible touch on the back of his neck, a shield and a promise. Boarding the Air France flight felt like walking onto a stage. Every smile at the cabin crew, every murmured ‘merci,’ was a performance. He took his window seat, the lead-lined pouch containing the Aegis Alpha prototype a heavy secret in his carry-on. He stared out at the rain-streaked tarmac, but he didn’t see the ground crew or the waiting planes. He saw Sabe’s eyes in the lounge.

 The flight was a study in surreal normality. He was served a gourmet meal, offered a selection of fine wines, all while the ghost of his former life and the spectre of his dangerous future hung over him. He was a fugitive sipping Bordeaux at 30,000 feet, his destiny tied to a man on another plane, the air between them still vibrating with an electricity that transcended distance. When they landed in Geneva, the familiar skyline was a punch to the gut.

 This city was the heart of his empire, the site of his greatest triumphs, and now the lair of his most intimate enemies. He moved through passport control, his heart hammering as the officer scrutinized ‘Alain Roche’s’ documents. A stamp. A nod. He was through. He flagged down a taxi and headed to the safe house in Carouge, the same sterile, anonymous apartment they had used before. He let himself in; the silence echoed around him. He was the first to arrive. He poured a glass of water, his hand steady.

 He wasn’t the same man who had fled Geneva weeks ago, broken and desperate. He had been stripped bare, accused, betrayed, and had, in turn, accused and betrayed the one person who mattered. He had burned his empire to the ground by choice. And in the ashes, he had found something else. Something that hummed in the air of an airport lounge, something that looked back at him from across a room with a silent unwavering promise. He heard a key in the lock.

 The door opened, and Sabe stepped inside. He was just as he had been in the lounge-composed, professional, his bag slung over his shoulder. They held gazes in the small living space. No words were spoken. None were needed. The flight was over; the risk had been taken.

 They were both here. The unspoken electricity that had connected them across a terminal had followed them home. It filled the safe house, a palpable force. The hunt for the truth was about to begin in earnest. But in that silent moment, standing in a sterile room in Geneva, Anton knew with absolute certainty that he had already found the only thing worth building a new foundation on. 

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