Chapter 64: A Ghost in the Machine

London, seen from the 40th-floor corner office of Rogers Industries, was a sprawling, rain-smeared circuit board of power and light. Evelyn Voss stood before the floor-to-ceiling glass, a crystal tumbler of a 25-year-old Macallan in her hand. She wasn't admiring the view. She was surveying a battlefield.

The news from Geneva had been… disruptive. The sniper's failure was an unacceptable variable. Rico Nadir’s death was a messy complication, but a contained one. The problem, the persistent, gnawing problem, was Sabatine Stalker.

He was more than a bodyguard. He was a catalyst. He had turned Anton from a predictable, emotionally constipated CEO into a wild card, a man capable of kicking down doors and diving in front of bullets. He was the immune system fighting her infection, and he was proving alarmingly effective.

The original plan—disgrace, imprisonment, or a tragic accident—was now insufficient. Stalkers had to be neutralized, utterly and completely. He had to be transformed from a protector into a pariah, from a shield into a weapon she could turn against Anton.

A slow, cold smile touched her lips. It was time to stop playing with physical threats. It was time to attack his identity.

She turned from the window and settled into the sleek, ergonomic throne behind her desk. The surface was clean, holding only a state-of-the-art laptop and a secure, encrypted landline. She woke the computer, her fingers flying across the keyboard with a pianist's precision. She wasn't just a CFO; she was an architect of systems, and she was about to build a prison made of ones and zeros.

She accessed a server located in a non-extradition country, a digital ghost town she used for her most sensitive work. Here, she began to weave her web.

Document One: The Embezzlement. She started with financials. It was elegant in its simplicity. Using her god-level access to Rogers' global accounts, she created a series of false invoices from shell companies with names reminiscent of Sabe’s known aliases. The payments were routed through a dizzying series of offshore accounts in the Caymans, Cyprus, and Switzerland, before finally—"incompetently"—being funneled to a bank account in Geneva registered to a "Sebastian Stahl," a name she knew was linked to an old, buried identity of Sabe's from his intelligence days. The total sum was a neat, eye-watering £15 million. The digital paper trail was flawless, a masterpiece of forensic fraud. It showed a man slowly, greedily, syphoning funds from the company he was paid to protect.

Document Two: The Data Leak. This was a real work of art. She hacked into the archived, classified files from the Bakhmar incident—files she knew Sabe was prohibited from ever accessing again. She extracted highly redacted intelligence on asset placements and deep-cover operatives. Then, using a complex algorithm to mimic his known encryption patterns and digital fingerprints, she fabricated a series of communications between "Sabatine Stalker" and a known intermediary for the Zorya Collective. The messages were deliberately cautious, full of spy-craft, discussing the sale of "the package" for a sum that matched the embezzled funds. She even inserted a fragment of the Aethelred prototype's source code, leaked weeks earlier by Marcus, as a "sample" of the goods.

It was a perfect, poisonous narrative: A disgraced, cash-strapped former operative, hired by a vulnerable billionaire, sees the opportunity of a lifetime. He uses his position to embezzle millions while simultaneously selling his former service's most sensitive secrets, and his current employer's crown jewel, to the highest bidder.

She reviewed her work, a curator admiring a dark exhibition. It was all there. The motive. The means. The opportunity. It was a story that Interpol, MI6, and every other intelligence agency would have no choice but to believe. It fit the profile of a turned asset perfectly.

She picked up the secure landline and dialed a number that routed through six different relays before connecting.

"It's Voss," she said, her voice cool and composed. "The package is ready for delivery. The narrative is 'Vengeful Ghost.' Authorization code Zulu-Mike-Seven-Niner."

There was a pause on the other end, the sound of keys clicking. "Receiving it now. The target?"

"Sabatine Stalker. Former UK military intelligence. I'm sending his file. I want him on the Interpol watch list by dawn. Red notice for financial crimes, espionage, and corruption. I want every border control camera from here to Tokyo to flag his face. I want him to be a ghost who sets off alarms."

"Understood. The source of the intel?"

"Anonymous tip from a concerned senior executive at Rogers Industries, terrified of what our internal audit has uncovered," she replied smoothly. "The evidence will speak for itself."

She ended the call and took a slow sip of whisky, the smoky liquid a comfort. She then placed a second call, this one to a private number in Geneva.

Marcus answered on the first ring, his voice tense. "Evelyn. What's happening? The news is reporting a shooting—"

"Everything is under control," she interrupted, her voice a silken whip. "A minor complication has been dealt with. More importantly, our problem is solving itself. Mr. Stalker is about to become the most wanted man in Europe."

She could almost hear his confused frown through the phone. "What? How?"

"Let's just say his past has finally caught up with him in a rather spectacular fashion." She allowed a thread of contempt to enter her voice. "Your brother's knight in shining armor is a traitor and a thief. By this time tomorrow, Anton will have nowhere to run, and no one to run to. The prototype exchange will proceed as planned. Be ready."

She hung up before he could ask another question. He was a tool, and tools didn't need to understand the mechanics of the workshop.

Evelyn leaned back in her chair, the leather sighing in deference. She looked out at the London night. In a nondescript office in Lyon, France, a digital package was being unwrapped. An analyst, bleary-eyed from a long shift, would scan the documents. The evidence was so overwhelming, so meticulously fabricated, that it would bypass layers of scrutiny. The embezzlement would trigger a financial crimes alert. The leaked classified data would send a simultaneous, and far more urgent, flag to the intelligence division.

Within the hour, a red marker would be placed against the name Sabatine Stalker in the Interpol databases. His photograph, his known aliases, his biometric data—all of it would now be a key that unlocked handcuffs instead of doors. He would be trapped, hunted not just by her private assassins, but by the entire law enforcement apparatus of the civilized world.

Anton, clinging to his fallen protector, would be clinging to a sinking stone. The world would see him as either a dupe or a co-conspirator. His credibility would be ash. His company would be seized by regulators. He would have nothing.

And he would have no one.

Evelyn took a final, satisfied sip of her whisky. The web was woven. The threads of finance, espionage, and corporate betrayal were pulled taut. All that was left was to wait for the fly to struggle, to entangle itself further, until it was completely, utterly immobilized.

Sabatine Stalker had thought the greatest threat was a bullet.

He was about to learn that paper cuts, in sufficient numbers, could be just as fatal. And the document she had just created was a guillotine.

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