Chapter 8 - The Interrogation on the Snow TerraceAt 9:00 AM the following morning, the winter sun broke through the alpine fog in a brilliant sheet of gold over the lake.
Inside the subterranean holding vaults beneath the funicular powerhouse, the air was freezing, smelling of wet granite, hydraulic oil, and the bitter draft from the glacier vents.
Vivienne von Berg sat on an iron bench inside a reinforced security cell, her sixty-thousand-dollar silver lamé gown stained with black grease, her acrylic nails broken, her bare feet shivering on the cold floorboards.
The heavy sliding iron door hissed open.
Gabriel walked into the vault, accompanied by Assistant Federal Prosecutor Marcus Vance and two military marshals carrying thick evidence binders.
When Vivienne saw Gabriel, she scrambled to the bars, her bloodshot eyes wide with hysterical panic.
“Gabriel! Please! Tell the marshals to release me! My father had another cardiac episode in federal custody this morning—he can't survive in a prison cell!”
Marcus Vance stepped forward, opening the primary federal indictment folder.
“Your father is currently under armed military guard at the University Hospital in Bern, Miss von Berg,” the prosecutor said, his voice flat as an iron slab. “The federal grand jury returned true bills across ninety-four counts thirty minutes ago. Aggravated industrial sabotage, defense procurement fraud, and the systematic theft of sovereign transit patents.”
He showed her the decrypted internal memos recovered from the Zurich foundries.
“For six months, you and your father actively concealed the micro-fractures in the high-tensile support beams of the Saint-Gothard tunnel, while personally ordering the workshop security to destroy Seraphina Moretti's calculations to prevent the failure from being exposed.”
Vivienne looked at Gabriel, weeping in broken, hopeless defeat.
“Gabriel... what are you going to do to me?”
Gabriel looked down at his former associate with cold, absolute detachment.
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“I am not going to do anything to you, Vivienne,” Gabriel whispered, his voice quiet enough that the water dripping in the drain sounded like a metronome. “The law will do it for me. You will spend twenty-five years at the Federal Correctional Facility in Hindelbank. You will eat prison bread. You will scrub prison floors. And every morning when you wake up, you will remember that the woman you called a laboratory dog owns every bank your father ever built.”
He turned on his heel and walked out of the holding block, leaving her frantic, weeping cries to echo against the damp granite until the heavy iron door slammed shut forever.
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