The private meeting between Margareta Lindqvist and Viktor Raud took place in a windowless conference room on the Parliament's fourth floor, its walls lined with law books and its air thick with the smell of old paper and institutional authority. Leo watched it unfold on a monitor in the waiting room, his hands clenched on his knees, his heart beating so hard he could feel it in his temples. Elena sat beside him, her expression carved from stone.
The security camera feed showed Lindqvist seated at the head of the conference table, her posture erect and unyielding. Raud sat opposite her, flanked by two lawyers in dark suits. The Veridian ambassador had been excluded from the meeting—a small victory, Johan had explained, won by Lindqvist's insistence that the gathering was an informal fact-finding session rather than a diplomatic negotiation. But Raud's presence alone was a statement. He had walked into the heart of the investigation against him and was now treating it as a negotiation between equals.
"Thank you for agreeing to meet with me, Chair Lindqvist," Raud said, his voice carrying through the monitor's speakers with the same calm authority Leo had heard in the press conference. "I understand this is irregular, but the allegations made against me in your hearing today were extraordinary. I felt it was necessary to respond in person."
"The allegations are supported by documentary evidence and the testimony of witnesses who were present at the events in question," Lindqvist replied. "You have stated publicly that this evidence is fabricated. I am willing to hear your explanation of how and why."
Raud smiled—a thin, controlled expression that did not reach his eyes. "The explanation is simple. The network you are investigating is real. The trafficking of children from Veridia and other countries is real. But I am not the leader of that network. I am its primary target."
He gestured to one of his lawyers, who produced a folder of documents and slid it across the table. "These records show that I have been investigating the Kronberg Institute since 2005—the year before it was officially closed. My investigation was the reason I was forced to fake my death. The network discovered what I was doing and sent operatives to eliminate me. I staged the ferry accident to escape them, and I have been living in hiding ever since."
Lindqvist did not touch the folder. "If that is true, why did you not come forward when the Institute was closed? Why did you not cooperate with the EU's investigations?"
"Because the network had infiltrated those investigations. Every time I tried to reach out to a journalist or an official, they were killed or silenced. The kill list you have heard about—those thirty-seven names—those were my contacts. My sources. The people I had recruited to help me expose the network. They were killed because they were connected to me."
Leo felt Elena's hand tighten on his arm. "He is lying," she whispered. "He is using the kill list as a cover story. Those people died because they threatened him, not because they helped him."
"Will the committee believe him?" Leo asked.
Johan, who was standing near the monitor with his tablet clutched in his hands, shook his head slowly. "Some of them might. His story is plausible—it fits the same facts as our evidence, but it reverses the roles. He is claiming to be the hero of the same narrative in which we have cast him as the villain. If the committee cannot determine which version is true, they may decline to pursue charges against either side."
"That is exactly what he wants," Elena said. "Deadlock. Confusion. A story that is too complicated to resolve. He does not need to prove he is innocent. He only needs to make it impossible to prove he is guilty."
On the monitor, Lindqvist had finally opened the folder and was leafing through its contents. Her expression was unreadable, but her silence was telling. The documents Raud had provided were thick and detailed, the kind of paperwork that looked authoritative regardless of its content. Leo recognized the strategy—the same strategy the network had used for decades. Bury the truth under so much bureaucratic weight that no one could dig it out.
"These documents will need to be verified," Lindqvist said. "The committee will review them alongside the evidence we have already received. In the meantime, Mr. Raud, you are free to remain in Stockholm. You are not under arrest, and no warrant has been issued for your detention."
"I appreciate that, Chair Lindqvist. I am here to cooperate fully with your investigation. I have nothing to hide."
The meeting ended with a formal exchange of pleasantries that made Leo's skin crawl. Raud rose from the table, shook Lindqvist's hand, and walked out of the conference room with the same calm authority he had displayed throughout. He had just stared down the chair of an EU Parliamentary committee and walked away unscathed. The man who had trafficked thousands of children was now positioning himself as a cooperating witness.
The monitor went dark, and the waiting room fell silent. Johan was the first to speak.
"This is bad," he said. "Raud is not just trying to defend himself. He is trying to flip the entire investigation. If he can convince the committee that he is a victim rather than a perpetrator, the inquiry will be paralyzed. The member states that have been protecting the network will use the confusion to block any further action."
"Then we need to prove he is lying," Leo said. "The documents he provided—they must contain flaws. Inconsistencies. Something we can use to show they are fabricated."
"Even if they are fabricated, proving it will take time. The committee's forensic analysts are already overwhelmed by the volume of evidence from the archive. Adding Raud's documents to the queue will delay the investigation by weeks, perhaps months."
"We do not have months," Elena said. "The network is still operating. Children are still being sold. If the investigation stalls, the network will use the time to destroy evidence and rebuild under new names."
Leo stood up and began pacing the waiting room. His mind was racing, sorting through the fragments of information he had gathered over the past week. The archive. The kill list. The medical records. Anya's confession. Elena's testimony. There was something connecting all of it, something he had not yet seen.
"Raud said the kill list was his—that the people on it were his contacts, his sources. But the list was compiled by Luts, who was working for the network at the time. Luts told me he processed the paperwork for every elimination. He was not compiling a list of Raud's enemies. He was compiling a list of the network's victims."
"That proves Raud is lying," Johan said. "But Luts is dead. His testimony cannot be cross-examined."
"What about the other witnesses? The people who worked with Luts—the ones who helped him build the archive. Anya is dead, or at least missing. But there must be others."
Johan consulted his tablet. "The network Anya and Luts built includes dozens of former Institute employees and Silber Group defectors. Most of them are in hiding, afraid to come forward. But there is one who might be willing to testify—a man named Gregor Falk. He was the one who drove you from Antwerp to Brussels."
Leo stopped pacing. Gregor. The big man with the heavy jaw and the watchful eyes, who had spent eleven years as a field operative for Silber Group before a six-year-old girl had reminded him of his niece and broken something inside him.
"Where is Gregor now?"
"He was in Charleroi, waiting for the outcome of the hearing. Anya arranged a safe house there. I can try to contact him."
"Contact him. Tell him we need him in Stockholm. If he can testify about Silber Group's command structure—about who gave the orders—we can prove that Raud was the one in charge."
Johan nodded and began typing on his tablet. Leo turned to Elena. She was still staring at the dark monitor, her expression troubled.
"There is something else," she said. "Something Raud said during the meeting. He said he had been investigating the Institute since 2005. But I was at the Institute in 2005. I saw him there. He was not investigating it. He was running it."
"Can you prove that?"
"Not with documents. With my testimony. But the committee has already heard my testimony, and Raud has dismissed it as the fabrications of a woman who sold her own child. They will need more than my word."
Leo thought about the video in the Kronberg archive—the footage of Elena being led into the glass-walled room, the auctioneer's calm professional voice describing her unborn child as a commodity. The auctioneer's face had been blurred by a digital mask, but the voice was unmistakable. Raud's voice. The same calm, measured tone he had just used in the press conference and the meeting with Lindqvist.
"The video," Leo said. "The archive footage from the Institute. Luts had recordings of the auctions going back years. If we can find a recording that shows Raud's face—without the digital mask—we can prove he was there."
"The digital masks were applied before the footage was archived," Johan said. "Luts told me the network was careful about that. They never allowed unredacted footage to be stored."
"But the footage exists somewhere. The original recordings, before the masks were applied. Raud would have kept them—he is the kind of man who keeps leverage. If we can find them, we can expose him."
Elena looked up, her eyes sharpening. "Raud has a private estate outside the Veridian capital. That is where he has been living since he faked his death. If he kept the original recordings, they would be there."
"Breaking into a private estate in Veridia is not exactly a simple task," Johan said. "The country has a warrant for Leo's arrest. The network controls the security services. It would be a suicide mission."
"Not if we have help from the inside," Leo said. "Gregor worked for Silber Group for eleven years. He knows the security protocols, the layouts, the personnel. If anyone can get us into that estate, he can."
Johan stared at him. "You are proposing to break into Viktor Raud's private residence, in a country where you are wanted for espionage, to steal evidence that may or may not exist, while the network is actively hunting you. That is not a plan. That is a death wish."
"Do you have a better idea?"
Johan was silent. The monitor on the wall showed the security feed from the Parliament lobby, where Raud was now holding another press conference, his calm voice filling the screen. He was telling the journalists that he had been vindicated, that the committee was reviewing his evidence, that the allegations against him would soon be exposed as a hoax. The narrative was shifting, minute by minute, and the truth was losing ground.
"Contact Gregor," Leo said again. "Tell him we need him. Tell him it is not over yet."
Johan nodded reluctantly and began typing. Elena stood and walked to the window, looking out over the Stockholm skyline. The city was grey and cold, its rooftops dusted with snow that had begun to fall while they were watching the monitor.
"Even if we find the recordings," she said quietly, "Raud will not go down easily. He has been preparing for this moment for years. He has allies in a dozen governments, operatives in a dozen countries, resources we cannot begin to match. We are two people with a folder of documents and a handful of witnesses. He is an empire."
"He is an empire built on lies," Leo said. "And we have the truth. The truth is not nothing."
Elena turned to face him, and for a moment, her expression softened into something that reminded him of the photograph in the adoption file—the woman with hollow eyes and dark hair, holding her infant son against her chest. But the eyes were not hollow now. They were full of something that might have been hope, or might have been the memory of hope, or might have been the determination to create it where it had not existed before.
"You are right," she said. "The truth is not nothing. It is the only thing that has kept me alive for seventeen years. I will not let Raud take it from us now."
The snow continued to fall outside the window, blanketing the city in white. Somewhere in the Parliament building, Viktor Raud was spinning his counter-narrative, weaving a web of lies that threatened to ensnare the investigation. Somewhere in the Baltic Sea, a ferry was carrying passengers between the same ports Leo and Elena had traversed. And somewhere in the hidden spaces of the network, the machinery of trafficking was still turning, still processing, still selling children to the highest bidder.
But the truth was still alive. The witnesses were still breathing. And Leo Thorne, who had been Leonhard once, who had been Lot 23 in an auction catalogue, was not done fighting.
No comments yet. Be the first to comment!