Ghost Directive

Chapter 3: A Key Without a Lock

The man calling himself Markus Klein checked into the Beaufort Hotel under a passport that cost more than his father’s house. The concierge smiled politely, made no mention of the “Do Not Disturb” flag already pre-tagged to his reservation.

Room 906.

Corner suite. No cameras in the hallway—Specter made sure of that.

Inside the closet safe, exactly as promised, lay the black case.

He stared at it for ten minutes before touching it.

He didn’t open it.

---

Across the city, Damien Voss stepped through the double doors of Geneva’s Interpol liaison office, flashing an outdated but still-valid agency credential. The guard barely looked up. Voss moved with purpose. He looked like someone who belonged everywhere and nowhere.

Inside the briefing room, the whiteboard was cluttered with incomplete theories.

MOTIVE: Political destabilization? False flag?

TARGET: Unknown

OPERATOR: Unknown

At the bottom, someone had written in red:
“Professional. Surgical. No mistakes.”

A voice broke the silence.

“I didn’t think you were real.”

Voss turned. A woman stood near the far wall, arms crossed, reading him like a puzzle she wasn’t sure she wanted to solve.

She wore a fitted suit, no badge. Her expression was pure counter-intel—cool, unreadable, patient.

“Neither are you,” Voss replied. “Which means we’re off the record.”

She smiled faintly. “Eva Malik. NATO security liaison. I got dragged into this circus after the chatter hit Level Five.”

“You think it’s Specter?”

“I think we’ve got enough red flags to hang a parade.”

She handed him a tablet. It showed security footage of a man entering the summit building days earlier, dressed as a contractor. He carried a case matching the one from Paris. Facial recognition failed—too blurry, no matches.

Voss studied the footage, then tapped the screen.

“There. He hesitates at the exit door. Half a second. It’s a tell. He’s checking his blind spot.”

“So?”

“So he’s not just dropping surveillance. He’s testing response time.”

Eva raised an eyebrow. “You’ve dealt with this kind of operator before?”

“Once. I was five minutes too late. He was gone. But the building wasn’t.”

---

Meanwhile, Specter sat in the back of a laundromat, watching a tiny screen connected to a listening device planted inside the summit building’s west wing.

The diplomats didn’t matter.

The guards didn’t matter.

He was listening for the pattern behind the noise.

Someone was pulling security details last minute. That meant someone knew.

It didn’t change the plan.

But it made things more interesting.

---

At the NATO safehouse, Voss poured himself a shot of something expensive. Malik sat across from him, scanning the map on the wall. Colored pins marked Specter’s known movements—or what passed for known. All guesses. None confirmed.

“He’s not just a ghost,” she muttered. “He’s a myth.”

“No,” Voss said. “He’s a message. You don’t hire Specter unless you want something to disappear without question.”

Malik pointed to one of the pins. “Paris. That courier. We still haven’t tracked him.”

“We won’t,” Voss said. “Not unless Specter wants him to be found.”

---

In Room 906, Markus Klein sat on the edge of the bed, sweating.

The phone buzzed once.

A text message appeared:
814. No sooner. No later. Do not fail.

He thought of his wife. His daughter. The reason he took this job. He thought of what the money would do for them. What it meant.

And he thought about what it meant if he failed.

That night, Specter stood alone on the roof of the Carillon Building across from the summit.

He knelt, opening a long, flat case.

Inside was not a weapon.

It was a scope.

A custom optic, calibrated for refracted glass, variable wind offset, and micro-vibration stabilization.

He mounted it to a lightweight tripod and scanned the summit ballroom across the street.

Through the lens, the target stepped into view.

Prime Minister Rydell.

Right on schedule.

Specter adjusted the focus, tracking his gait, the way his shoulders moved, the curve of his neck.

Not yet.

Not tonight.

But soon.