The fury inside Ezra Prentice was a white-hot nova, a star of pure rage collapsing in on itself. The knowledge of Sullivan's betrayal was a wound deeper and more personal than any he had ever suffered. For a long, silent moment, he entertained the exquisite, simple pleasure of absolute retribution. He envisioned an order given, a quiet team dispatched, a single, definitive act of violence that would erase the traitor from the face of the earth.
But the cold, clear logic of the architect, the grand strategist, quickly rose to smother the flames. Killing Sullivan was easy. It was an emotional spasm, a satisfaction that would last but a moment. It would solve nothing. The true enemy, the persistent, righteous, and now dangerous David, would remain. The reporter, Lee, would continue to dig. The threat would continue to fester.
A new, more terrible, and far more elegant strategy began to form in the cold calculus of his mind. Why swat the fly when you could use it as bait to trap the lion? He would not stop this meeting. He would nurture it. He would stage it. He would turn this ultimate act of treason into the ultimate weapon.
He made the call. The secure red telephone felt cold and heavy in his hand as he dialed the private number for J. Edgar Hoover.
"Mr. Director," Ezra began, his voice a perfect instrument of calm, controlled concern. "I have uncovered a grave security risk within my own organization. I believe it requires the immediate attention of the Bureau."
He proceeded to weave a masterful fiction, a story built around a core of devastating truth. "My head of European security, a man named Sullivan," he explained, "has, I fear, suffered a severe mental breakdown. We have evidence suggesting he is suffering from delusions, paranoia… a complete break from reality induced by the immense pressures of his work. We believe he is now attempting to sell fabricated corporate and national security secrets."
He paused, letting Hoover absorb the information. "Worse," Ezra continued, his voice laced with practiced regret, "he appears to have found a sympathetic ear. A party who, perhaps unwittingly, is encouraging his delusions. My nephew, David Rockefeller, is scheduled to meet with Sullivan in Geneva in two days' time."
Hoover was silent on the other end, but Ezra could almost hear the man's mind working, the gears of suspicion and opportunity turning.
"I am formally requesting the Bureau's assistance," Ezra said, making it an official act. "My own people cannot be trusted to be objective in a matter involving one of their own. I ask that you dispatch a team to monitor this meeting. I need you to help me apprehend a dangerous traitor before he can do irreparable harm to the security of this nation."
He had done it. He had taken his own internal crisis and outsourced its resolution to the most powerful and feared law enforcement agency on earth. He was now using Hoover and the FBI as a weapon to entrap both his most loyal friend and his greatest family enemy, simultaneously.
While the trap in Geneva was being set, the messy consequences of the Marseille operation demanded his attention. Baron von Hauser arrived at Kykuit with an urgent update.
"The witness from the Dubois hit has surfaced," the Baron reported, his tone grim. "The rival oil agent. He's in Paris. He has gone to ground and is attempting to sell his story to the highest bidder—the French press, their intelligence service, anyone who will listen."
Ezra's jaw tightened. The man's story—that the "CIA asset" Dubois had actually been hired to attack Prentice Standard—was a loose thread that could unravel his entire KGB deception. If that information reached Colonel Volkov, the whole fragile architecture of lies would collapse.
"Clean it up, Baron," Ezra said, his voice curt, his focus already stretched to its limit. "No more noise. Just make him disappear."
Von Hauser nodded, a flicker of something cold and final in his eyes, and left to dispatch his assassins.
Ezra's attention, already fractured between the impending drama in Geneva and the cleanup in Paris, was shattered again by a frantic call from Arthur Vance.
"Sir, it's Lee," Vance said, his voice strained with panic. "The reporter. He's found something. Something big."
Vance explained that Harrison Lee, using the initial link provided by the "Trans-Continental Logistics" file, had continued to dig. He had spent days painstakingly tracking down every individual ever listed as an officer or employee of the defunct shell company. Most were dead ends, phantom names on a legal document. But he had found one.
"The company's original accountant," Vance explained, his voice cracking. "A man named Albert Finch. He's retired, living in obscurity in a small town in New Jersey. According to our old records, he was the one who personally processed the payments to James Peters. He was there at the beginning."
Ezra felt a jolt of ice water in his veins. Finch. He remembered the name. A quiet, alcoholic man who had been paid handsomely for his silence and creative bookkeeping years ago. He was the one person, the one living, breathing loose end, who could definitively link the James Peters frame-up directly to Ezra's inner circle. He was the last thread.
"Lee is on his way to interview him now," Vance concluded, his voice barely a whisper. "He left his office an hour ago."
If Lee got to Finch, if that old, broken man decided to talk, the game was over. The lie would be exposed. David would be vindicated. The Senate committee would be reconvened with a vengeance. Everything would unravel.
Ezra stood in his study, a map of the world spread out before him on the great table. He felt like a god juggling planets, trying to keep them from colliding. He was fighting a real-time, three-front war, each theater reaching its climax at the exact same moment.
On the map, he saw the invisible lines of conflict stretching across the globe.
In Geneva, Switzerland, two men who should have been allies, David Rockefeller and the traitorous Sullivan, were preparing to meet, walking into a perfectly laid trap set by Ezra and the FBI.
In a dark, rain-slicked alley in Paris, von Hauser's assassins, the bloody instruments of his will, were closing in on the lone witness who could shatter his grandest deception.
And on a quiet, tree-lined street in suburban New Jersey, the crusading reporter Harrison Lee was driving towards the small, unassuming house of the one man alive who could tell him the whole, terrible truth.
All three events were happening simultaneously, a convergence of consequences from a dozen past decisions. Ezra stood at the nexus, a puppeteer pulling strings across the globe, but the strings were stretched taut, vibrating with a tension that could not hold. Any one of them could snap. And a single failure, in Geneva, in Paris, or in a quiet New Jersey town, would be enough to bring the entire intricate, blood-soaked architecture of his empire crashing down around him. The collision was coming.
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