Checkmate
Wald
Same day
I board my private jet minutes before takeoff.
The smell of leather. The muted hum of the engines. The comfort of expensive routine.
I settle into my seat. The flight attendant smiles and offers me a glass of champagne, which I accept without hesitation.
Everything is under control.
My phone rings.
Bruno Lacluse. My contact within the police.
I answer immediately.
“What is it?”
“Bianca Fabre and Peltier made a deal with the prosecutor on Thursday,” he replies tensely.
I absorb the information without moving.
“I’m listening.”
My voice remains calm. Controlled.
“They gave you up.”
I close my eyes for a fraction of a second.
Predictable.
“And why am I only hearing about this now? Explain to me why I pay you.”
Silence.
Incompetents. All of them. I never should have relied on them.
As for Bianca and Gaspard, their betrayal doesn’t even surprise me. Annoying, but manageable.
It will take more than this to stop me.
I hang up and place another call.
The moment the head of R&D at our Amsterdam branch answers, I ask:
“Where do we stand? Have the biochemists found a way to produce the molecule?”
“No. Nothing conclusive. They still can’t stabilize the formula.”
My jaw tightens.
Still nothing.
I pay fortunes to surround myself with incompetence.
After a heavy silence, he asks:
“What if the formula was never the right one?”
I slowly straighten in my seat.
“Explain yourself.”
“We’ve been working on it for weeks. Nothing stabilizes. Nothing is scalable. What if they let us steal exactly what they wanted us to steal?”
A tense stillness lingers in the air.
For the first time, I consider a possibility I truly dislike.
What if I never had the advantage at all? What if the theft itself was part of the trap?
I grit my teeth and end the call.
Why hasn’t this plane taken off yet?
A distant noise draws closer.
I frown.
A siren.
Then another.
Closer and closer.
I stand abruptly and head toward the cockpit.
Outside… police vehicles surround the jet. Lined up. Organized. Relentless.
The pilot turns toward me, pale-faced.
A voice echoes through a loudspeaker.
“Shut down the engines and exit the aircraft.”
I remain perfectly still.
For the first time in a long while, I realize the game is over.
Checkmate.