Chapter 22 Thomas
Thomas
Will came back from the village with color in his cheeks and news in his eyes.
I was sitting at the kitchen table, my arm in a sling, pretending to read a three-day-old newspaper I’d found in Dr. Müller’s study.
In truth, I’d been watching the clock, counting the minutes since Will had slipped out to find a phone.
Every minute he was gone was a minute something could go wrong.
But here he was.
Alive and unshot.
That was becoming my baseline for a good day.
“Well?” I asked.
“Manakin’s furious, but he’s not pulling us out.
” Will shed his coat, stomped snow off his boots, and sat down across from me.
“His team arrived in Bern yesterday, four men under diplomatic cover. He can’t officially authorize them to help us, but there’s a dead drop at the Hauptbahnhof if we need to make contact. ”
“That’s something.”
“It’s more than we had.” He glanced toward the hallway. “Where’s the Baroness?”
“Resting. Bisch is with her.” I studied his face, looking for whatever he wasn’t saying. “How bad was it? The conversation?”
“He reminded me that we’re burned if this goes sideways, tossed in jail, the usual.” Will almost smiled. “He also told me to tell you to stop getting shot.”
I snorted. “Noted. I’ll add it to my list of things to not do.”
The Baroness appeared in the doorway before Will could think of something snappy. She looked better than she had yesterday. She was still pale and moving carefully, but there was something sharper in her gaze.
Behind her, Bisch was a silent shadow.
“You spoke to your handler?” she asked.
“Yes.” Will stood, offered her his chair. She waved him off and lowered herself into the one beside me instead. “Manakin has resources in-country. They’re limited but real. He says if we can get concrete proof of the conspiracy, something they can take through official channels—”
The Baroness nodded slowly. “We need to discuss what we know and what we are going to do about it.”
Bisch took his usual position by the window. Will sat back down. The kitchen suddenly felt smaller, the four of us pressed together by the weight of what was coming.
“February 15th,” the Baroness said. “Eight days. I have been thinking about the Chamber Session, about what it means and how they plan to use it.”
I listened as she laid out how a manufactured crisis using infrastructure seizures, communications blackouts, and the appearance of a foreign attack could trigger the session.
She walked through how compromised ministers could push through emergency decrees, and how the Order or the Soviets, whoever would step into the void, could seize control of the government while wrapping themselves in constitutional legitimacy.
“By the time anyone realizes what has happened,” she finished, “it will be too late. Resistance becomes treason. Opposition becomes sedition. They will have the law on their side.”
“How do we stop it?” I asked. “How can we expose them before they can trigger the crisis?”
“That requires proof, and it requires knowing who we can trust.” The Baroness’s good eye swept the table. “Which brings us to the question we have been avoiding.”
I felt Will tense beside me.
Bisch didn’t move from the window, but something shifted in his posture.
“You arranged the meetings,” I said to Bisch. Not an accusation. Just a fact. “Weber. Maurer. You knew the times and places.”
“Yes.” His voice was flat. “I did.”
“And yet you went back for Otto in the middle of a firefight. You collapsed the tunnel. You carried a dying man through hell when you could have saved yourself.” I held his gaze. “That’s not what a traitor does.”
“No,” the Baroness said quietly. “It is not.”
She locked eyes with her butler and held his gaze for what felt like days. Finally, Bisch nodded once, the barest acknowledgment of whatever they hadn’t said aloud, and turned back to the window.
“So if not Bisch,” Will said, “then who?”
I found myself thinking back through every meeting, every contact, every moment when information could have leaked.
And I kept coming back to the same place.
“What about Engel?”
Will turned to me, confusion creasing his brow. “The banker?”
“Think about it. In that meeting at his office, the information he gave us was too well organized. He pulled that folder out of his drawer without so much as a thought, and he spoke like he was expecting exactly the questions we asked.” I leaned forward, ignoring the throbbing in my shoulder.
“And he was nervous, more nervous than made sense, even given the circumstances. He kept mentioning his daughter.”
“His daughter is in Munich,” the Baroness said slowly.
“She would be easy leverage.” Bisch’s voice from the window. “They threaten the girl, he cooperates. It is the oldest play there is.”
The Baroness was quiet for a long moment, her bandaged hands rested on the table, motionless.
“I smuggled his family out of Vienna,” she said finally. “He owes me everything.”
“Which is exactly why he wouldn’t come to you for help,” I said. “If they convinced him you couldn’t protect her, his collaboration was the only way to keep her safe—”
“He would betray me to save her.” The Baroness closed her good eye. “Yes. I can see it. The fear when we met. I thought it was fear of the conspiracy, but perhaps it was fear of what he had already done.”
“For all we know, they had his office bugged and were listening the whole time,” Will said carefully. “We don’t know any of this for certain. It’s still speculation.”
“Yes, but it makes sense.” The Baroness opened her eye, and I saw steel there. “The Sternberg records, Engel gave us summaries and analyses; but the source documents—the actual correspondence, the payment records—those will show who has been communicating with whom.”
“You want us to break into Sternberg AG?” I nearly fell out of my chair.
“I want to find the truth.” She met my eyes, then Will’s. “If Engel is the leak, we need to know. The Sternberg records would contain information about the conspiracy that he chose not to share—or was ordered not to share.”
I glanced at Will. He gave me a small nod.
“When?” I asked. “How?”
“Tomorrow night. That gives you a day to rest and scout the location.” The Baroness looked at my sling. “Can you manage?”
“I can manage.”
“Thomas—” the Baroness began to protest.
“I can manage.” I held her gaze. “You’re not the only stubborn one at this table.”
Something flickered across her face—almost a smile.
“No,” she said. “I suppose I am not.”
“I know the building,” Bisch said as he pushed off from the window. “I have been inside before, for other purposes. I will draw you a map.”
He found paper and began sketching with quick, precise strokes. Will leaned in to study the emerging layout. The Baroness watched, her mangled fingertips briefly tapping the rim of her cup until she winced and ceased the movement.
We were running out of time, but for the first time since we’d crawled out of that drainage channel, I felt like we were moving forward instead of just surviving.