Chapter 3: A Name in the Dark
The black Audi cut through the streets of Vienna like a ghost, gliding between dimly lit alleys and shadowed boulevards. The city was alive with the hum of distant traffic, but inside the car, silence hung thick between Jasper Hawke and Isabella Vega.
Hawke’s grip tightened around the cipher, his mind replaying the last seconds of Marius Keller’s life. The old spy had died before he could explain what the cipher truly meant. But his final word—“Bastion”—was enough to set Hawke on edge.
He turned the paper over in his hands, scanning the coordinates scribbled across the page. No traditional encryption, no elaborate ciphers—just raw, unfiltered numbers. A location.
Hawke had seen enough coded messages to know when something was deliberately left simple. Whoever had written this didn’t have time for complexity. They needed it found.
From the driver’s seat, Vega glanced at him. “You going to tell me what’s on that paper, or do I have to guess?”
Hawke folded the cipher and tucked it into his jacket. “Need-to-know basis.”
Vega scoffed. “Typical.” She downshifted, taking a hard right into an underground garage beneath an abandoned office complex. The moment the car rolled to a stop, she turned to face him.
“I need to know what I just risked my life for,” she said. “I don’t work for free.”
Hawke met her gaze, studying her. Isabella Vega was one of the best smugglers in Europe—a broker of secrets who could get a man out of any country, provided the price was right. She wasn’t someone to be trusted blindly. But right now, she was the only asset he had.
He reached into his pocket, pulled out a burner phone, and keyed in the coordinates from the cipher. A second later, a satellite map loaded onto the screen.
Vega leaned in, eyes narrowing. “Romania.”
Hawke nodded. The Carpathian Mountains. Remote. Isolated. A perfect place to hide something valuable.
She frowned. “You think Keller was leading you to a vault? A weapons cache?”
“I don’t know,” Hawke admitted. “But whatever ‘Bastion’ is, people are willing to kill for it.”
Vega tapped her fingers against the steering wheel, deep in thought. “If we’re going off-grid, we’ll need new identities. Cash. A plane.”
Hawke looked at her, his expression unreadable. “We?”
Vega smirked. “You need me, Hawke. I have connections in Romania. You don’t.”
He considered her words carefully. She was right—he needed a local contact. If he went in alone, it wouldn’t take long for the same people who killed Keller to find him.
Finally, he nodded. “Fine. But if you slow me down—”
Vega laughed. “Please. Try to keep up.”
A Ghost in the Network
Hawke stepped out of the car, pulling out a second burner phone. He needed to check something before heading to Romania.
He dialed a secure number. One ring. Two. Then a voice.
“This is Grey.”
The voice belonged to Anton Grey, a deep-cover analyst with MI6’s shadow division. Hawke and Grey had worked together before, trading classified intelligence in the back alleys of Istanbul and the deserts of Riyadh.
“I need a name run,” Hawke said. “Word: ‘Bastion.’”
A pause. Then: “Where did you hear that?”
“Not important.”
Another pause. When Grey spoke again, his voice was different—lower, sharper. “You don’t want to dig into this, Hawke.”
Hawke’s grip on the phone tightened. “I already have.”
Grey exhaled. “Bastion was a project. NATO black ops, shut down years ago. No records, no paper trail. Just whispers.”
Hawke’s instincts flared. “Then why is someone trying to kill for it?”
“I don’t know,” Grey admitted. “But if you’ve got a lead—burn it. Walk away.”
That wasn’t going to happen.
Hawke ended the call and turned back to Vega. “We leave in two hours.”
She raised an eyebrow. “And?”
He slid into the passenger seat. “We’re chasing ghosts.”
