Chapter 21 Will
Will
Ifound a phone booth in the village three kilometers from the farmhouse.
It was a risk, leaving. Bisch had warned against it.
He’d argued that every trip outside increased our exposure and gave the enemy another chance to spot us, but I couldn’t put it off any longer.
Manakin needed to know what had happened and what we had learned.
The walk took forty minutes through frozen fields and bare-branched woods.
I kept to the tree line where I could, watching for vehicles or for anything that might suggest pursuit.
The cold bit through my coat, but I barely felt it.
My mind was elsewhere—rehearsing what I would say, how I would say it, and how Manakin would react.
We had disobeyed direct orders.
We had assaulted a fortified installation.
We had engaged hostile forces, killed enemy combatants, and extracted a foreign national.
We had done every single thing he had explicitly told us not to do.
And Thomas had nearly died doing it.
The village was small, little more than a church, a handful of houses, and a general store that looked like it hadn’t changed since the previous century. The phone booth stood at the edge of the square, a wooden box with glass panels fogged by the cold.
I stepped inside, fed coins into the slot, and dialed the number.
After a series of clicks and chirps, a voice I didn’t recognize said, “Code?”
“Nightingale. Priority.”
A pause. More clicking sounds. Then: “Hold.”
As the line hummed with transatlantic static, I watched the village square through the fogged glass.
An old woman emerged from the general store, a basket over her arm.
A dog trotted past, nose to the ground.
Ordinary life continued as if the world wasn’t tilting toward catastrophe.
“Manakin.”
“Manakin, Emu.”
“Where the hell have you been?”
“Switzerland, sir. As you know.”
“What I know is that you went dark for three days after telling me you were going to continue only gathering intelligence. Then I get secondhand, fragmentary reports of some kind of incident at a mountain fortress.” A pause, heavy with controlled fury. “Please tell me that wasn’t you.”
I didn’t say anything.
“Goddamn it, Shaw.”
“The Baroness was taken, sir, kidnapped from her hotel. They were holding her at Adlerhorst, the fortress I mentioned in my last report. We went in to get her out.”
“You went in.” His voice was flat. “You assaulted a fortified military installation against my direct orders.”
“Yes, sir.”
“How many men did you have?”
“Three. Myself, Jacobs, and a local asset.”
“Three men against a fortress.” Manakin laughed, more scoff than amusement. “And you’re still alive. I don’t know whether to be impressed or furious.”
“Both would be appropriate, sir.”
“Don’t get smart with me, Shaw. You’re in no position.” He exhaled heavily, and I waited in silence as he gathered himself. “All right. Talk. Tell me what happened.”
I walked him through everything that had happened since we’d last spoken. He didn’t say a word, only listened. I could hear the scraping of his pen on paper as he took notes I hoped would never find their way into any official record or file.
“They knew we were coming,” I said. “The Shadow said they’d been watching us since Bern. Someone told them.”
“Your mole?”
“Yes, sir. We still don’t know who, but someone in the Baroness’s circle has been feeding them information. They’ve known about every meeting we’ve had, every contact we’ve reached out to. They’ve been one step ahead the whole time.”
“Any suspects?”
“We thought it might be Bisch, the Baroness’s longtime butler.
We didn’t know it, but he’s deeply involved with the Baroness’s intelligence work.
His duties as her butler are a cover. We suspected him largely because he arranged most of the compromised meetings, but his actions at the fortress .
. .” I shook my head, though Manakin couldn’t see it.
“He went back for a wounded man in the middle of a firefight, and he collapsed a tunnel to cover our escape. Those aren’t the actions of a traitor. ”
“So you’re back to square one.”
“For now. The Baroness is working on it. She’s . . . she’s not in good shape, sir, but she’s thinking and analyzing. I think focusing on the situation actually helps her cope with everything else, gives her an escape from what she went through. She’ll figure it out.”
“In the meantime, February 15th is still approaching.”
“Yes, sir. We still don’t fully understand what ‘Chamber Session’ means, but whatever it is, it’s happening in—” I did the math. “Eight days.”
Manakin was quiet for a moment.
“Casualties?”
I closed my eyes. “One dead. Otto Hartmann. He was the Baroness’s driver, though I think he was more like family to her than staff. He went into the fortress alone, before we arrived, determined to rescue her. They beat him badly. He died two days ago.”
“I’m sorry, son.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“And Jacobs?”
“Wounded. Bullet to the shoulder. He didn’t even notice until we were in the car driving away.
He lost a lot of blood.” I felt the memory rise—Thomas slumped against the window, his skin cold and clammy, my coat pressed against his wound.
“He’s recovering, sir. The doctor says he should be operational in a few days. ”
“Should be?”
“Yes, sir.”
Another silence. I could picture Manakin in whatever office he was in, cigarette burning between his fingers, processing the human cost of our unsanctioned operation.
“My team arrived in Bern yesterday,” he said finally.
I straightened. “Sir?”
“Four men. They’re operating under diplomatic cover as cultural attachés and trade representatives, the normal bullshit.
They’re working with limited resources, but they’re there.
” He paused. “I can’t officially authorize them to support you.
You’re still off the books, and what you did at that fortress—if any of that blows back on us, you understand what happens. ”
“We’re burned, disavowed, and probably prosecuted.”
“No probably about that.” His voice hardened, then softened again. “Regardless, my team is in-country. If you need to make contact, there’s a dead drop at the Hauptbahnhof. Locker 247. Check it daily. They may not assist you directly, but should you be in the same place at the same time . . .”
“Understood, sir.”
“I’m also pushing hard on the political side. The President and the Secretary of State are aware of the situation. If you can get proof, something concrete we can take to the Swiss President through official channels, it might be enough to shut this thing down before February 15th.”
“We’re working on it,” I said, though I wasn’t sure what we’d actually accomplished toward that end. The Baroness was barely recovered, Thomas was wounded, and we were hiding in a farmhouse, hunted, with no clear next move.
“Work faster.” Manakin’s voice was grim. “Eight days isn’t long.”
“I know, sir.”
“And Shaw?”
“Sir?”
“Tell Jacobs to stop getting shot. That’s an order he might actually follow.”
Despite everything—the cold, the fear, the weight of everything we’d done and everything still to come—I laughed.
“I already told him that, sir. I don’t think he listens to me any more than he does to you.”
Manakin grunted, the closest to a laugh I might ever hear.
“Check in again before the 15th. Whatever happens, I need to know.”
“Yes, sir.”
The line went dead.
I stood in the phone booth for a long moment, watching my breath fog in the cold air.
Church bells began to toll—slow and mournful, counting out the hour.
The old woman was gone.
The dog had wandered off.
It was just me, standing alone in a glass box, carrying more secrets and questions with only a thin hope of finding answers in time.