Josh's demeanor shifted entirely. The teasing friend was gone, replaced by the seasoned strategist Karl remembered. He moved to Karl's small table, sweeping the single place setting aside with his forearm. He pulled out his phone, not to make a call, but to use its screen as a makeshift map, his finger tracing invisible lines on the glass.
"Nightingale is paranoid," Josh began, his voice low and focused. "But his paranoia has a pattern. A rhythm. He's holed up in a private estate on Lake Como. Beautiful place. Isolated. A fortress."
He tapped the phone screen. "He's untouchable there. The security is a nightmare—ex-SAS, layered systems, the works. A direct assault is suicide, which is exactly what he expects from you. A final, furious charge into the guns."
Karl gave a slight, grim nod. That had been the vague, violent shape of his own plan.
"So, we don't go to him," Josh said, a sharp smile touching his lips. "We make him come to us. We make him leave his fortress."
He looked up, meeting Karl's eyes. "His one vulnerability is his ego. His need to control the narrative. The bounty on you isn't just about killing you; it's about proving his dominance. Proving he can erase his greatest mistake."
Josh leaned forward. "My play is this: we give him a narrative he can't resist. We leak a whisper, through a channel I know he monitors but thinks is secure, that you're broken. That the Ghost is finally shattered. That you've been tracked to a specific, vulnerable location—a safe house in the Swiss Alps I control. A place that's defensible but, crucially, not a fortress. A place a desperate man might run to."
Karl's eyes narrowed, already seeing the shape of it. "Bait."
"The most tempting bait imaginable," Josh confirmed. "Not just your location, but your perceived state. Weak. Beaten. He'll want to see it for himself. He'll want to deliver the final blow personally, to look into your eyes and confirm his victory. He won't be able to resist. He'll come. But he won't bring his entire army. He'll bring a core team, expecting a mop-up operation."
Josh's finger stabbed the table. "And that's when we spring the trap. The safe house isn't a sanctuary. It's a kill box. I've been prepping it for a year. Every inch is wired, every approach covered. We turn his arrogance against him. We let him walk right into the one place on earth where the odds are stacked in our favor."
He finally leaned back, crossing his arms. "We don't assault the fortress. We let him bring his crown to us, and we cut off his head in the doorway."
The plan was audacious. It was risky. It relied on predicting a madman's ego with perfect precision. But it was also brilliant. It was a plan that understood the enemy completely.
Karl looked from Josh's determined face to the stark, empty apartment around them. This wasn't a life. It was a waiting room. Josh was offering him a way out. Not to safety, but to resolution.
A slow, cold smile spread across Karl's face, the first genuine one in a long time. It was the smile of the Ghost.
"Alright, Josh," he said, his voice quiet and deadly. "Let's go hunting."