The transport plane descended through the clouds, revealing the sun-scorched, arid landscape of southern Spain. From the air, the estate looked like a paradise—a sprawling, white-walled villa surrounded by olive groves and dusty vineyards, a haven of tranquility under the brilliant blue sky. This was the new training compound for the Fire Brigade, the headquarters of Colonel Dubois. From the ground, Sullivan quickly realized, it was not a paradise. It was a devil's playground.
He had come here to impose order. His transfer, a self-imposed exile from the moral decay of Kykuit, had been repurposed by Ezra into a mission: bring military discipline to Dubois's operation, shape the mercenaries into a more professional, more controllable force. He had accepted the task with a soldier's grim determination.
What he found horrified him. The compound was not a military base; it was the court of a petty, brutish king. Dubois's men were not soldiers; they were the dregs of forgotten wars, men whose sadism had been honed in the filthy back alleys of colonial conflicts. There was an air of swaggering, unchecked menace to the place. Men drank heavily in the middle of the day, their laughter harsh and loud, their eyes cold and empty.
Sullivan's first full day culminated in a "training exercise" he was invited to observe. In the center of a dusty courtyard, a man was tied to a chair. He was a rival mercenary, captured after a turf dispute in Tangier. What followed was not an interrogation; it was a live-fire torture session. Dubois's men used the captive for target practice with low-caliber pistols, deliberately aiming to maim, not kill, their laughter echoing off the villa walls as the man screamed. The brutality was sickening, but what struck Sullivan to his core was its sheer, pointless indulgence. It served no strategic purpose. It was cruelty for its own sake.
Later that evening, Sullivan confronted Dubois in the Colonel's opulent office, a room decorated with stolen antiques and animal heads. Sullivan, standing ramrod straight, began to lay out the new protocols: stricter discipline, a clear chain of command, a formal code of conduct for all operations.
Dubois, lounging in a large leather chair, a glass of expensive brandy in his hand, listened with a lazy, contemptuous smirk. When Sullivan finished, the mercenary leader laughed, a low, guttural sound.
"A babysitter," Dubois sneered, swirling the brandy in his glass. "The old man in his castle sent me a babysitter to teach me how to play."
He stood up and walked around his desk, circling Sullivan like a shark. "You are a soldier, Sullivan. I respect that. You are a good dog, loyal to your master. But I am a warlord. We are not the same. You follow orders. I give them. This is my army. My kingdom. Your old man's money pays for it, but it is mine to command."
Sullivan felt a cold rage build within him, but he held his ground. "You are an asset of Mr. Prentice," he said, his voice dangerously low. "My orders are to ensure that asset is not a liability. Your actions are reckless. They draw attention."
Dubois laughed again, louder this time. "My actions get results! While your master plays his little games of whispers and lies, I deliver victories he can see and feel. He wants a monster? I am his monster. Do not presume to tell me how to hunt."
In that moment, Sullivan realized with a chilling, absolute certainty that this force was completely and irrevocably out of control. His transfer had not been an escape from Ezra's moral decay; it had been a descent into its most grotesque and unrestrained form. He had left the cold, sterile evil of the strategist for the hot, putrid evil of the brute. His loyalty to Ezra, the bedrock of his entire adult life, was now in direct, violent conflict with his own soldier's code of honor, with the fundamental tenets of discipline and purpose that separated a soldier from a butcher.
That night, alone in the spartan guest quarters he had been assigned, Sullivan sat down to write a report. The weight of his duty, of his conscience, was a physical thing. He had to warn Ezra. He had to make him see that the monster he had unleashed was going to consume them all.
Using a one-time pad and a coded phrasing they had used for years, he began to write.
MASTER, he wrote, the formal address feeling hollow and strange. DUBOIS IS A CANCER. OPERATIONS ARE INDISCIPLINATE. BRUTALITY IS UNCHECKED. HE IS BUILDING A PRIVATE ARMY, NOT A DENIABLE ASSET. THE FORCE IS UNCONTAINABLE AND POSES A DIRECT THREAT TO YOUR OWN LONG-TERM INTERESTS. RECOMMEND IMMEDIATE AND FINAL NEUTRALIZATION.
He detailed what he had seen, the torture, the lack of discipline, the megalomania of Dubois. He was making his case, fulfilling his duty as Ezra's loyal shield, warning his master of a clear and present danger.
But as he prepared the message for transmission, he hesitated. The sealed envelope felt heavy in his hand. He remembered the cold, dismissive way Ezra had spoken of the men sacrificed in Moscow. He remembered the chilling, emotionless logic with which Ezra had decided to sacrifice Kessler's family.
A terrible, poisonous thought crept into his mind. Does Ezra even care about the brutality, as long as the job gets done? Is this monstrousness not a bug, but a feature? He realized, with a sudden, sickening clarity, that he could no longer trust his commander's judgment, or his morality. What if he sent this report, and Ezra's response was simply to praise Dubois for his effectiveness? What if this horror was exactly what Ezra wanted?
He looked at the sealed report, the product of his lifelong loyalty. It felt like a lie. Continuing to serve a man he no longer trusted, no longer understood, was the ultimate act of treason—a treason against his own conscience.
He did not send the report to Ezra. He burned it, watching the ashes curl into black flakes in a ceramic dish.
He had made a decision. His loyalty was not to a man, but to the idea of the family and the empire that man was supposed to protect—an empire he now believed Ezra was leading to ruin.
In a secure location, away from the prying eyes of the compound, Sullivan made a different choice. He opened a new channel of communication, a deeply buried backchannel he had established years ago as a contingency, a line of contact he had never dreamed he would use.
The final scene shows a small, encrypted burst transmission leaving a discreet antenna in a Spanish village. It is not headed for Kykuit. It is headed for a private, secure post office box in New York City, a box he knew from old security briefings was monitored exclusively by David Rockefeller's personal security team.
The message was short, cryptic, and an act of profound, earth-shattering treason.
UNCLE'S EUROPEAN ASSET IS A LIABILITY. UNCONTAINED. DANGER TO ALL FAMILY INTERESTS. REQUIRE CONTACT. S.
Sullivan, the most loyal of soldiers, had finally broken. He had committed the one act he would have once thought impossible. He had reached out to the designated "enemy" of the family, because he now believed that his own commander was the greatest threat of all. The unraveling thread was no longer just an external threat; it had now appeared within the very heart of Ezra's command structure, held by the one man he had always trusted to guard his back.
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