Chapter 27 Will #2
“And your man Emu here”—the woman glanced at me—“was admirably tight-lipped when we met. All he would tell me was that a high-value asset was meeting with a general in the midst of an unknown threat level.” A hint of a smile.
“He was very professional, but that means my team is walking into whatever this is blind. Before we plan anything, I need to know what we’re actually dealing with. ”
The Baroness nodded slowly. “Yes. You do.” She looked around the table. “What I am about to tell you must not leave this room. If it reaches the wrong ears, people will die. More people than have already died.”
The woman’s expression sharpened. Her team straightened almost imperceptibly.
“Go on,” she said.
The Baroness began. “The immediate threat is an organization called the Order of Saint Longinus. They have been operating in Switzerland for decades—”
“The Order of Saint Longinus?” The CIA woman’s eyebrow rose as she interrupted.
“The Catholic mystics?” She glanced at her team, and I caught a flicker of doubt.
“I’ve seen the file on them. They’re little more than a handful of aristocrats playing at secret society, convinced they’re protecting Europe from godlessness.
” She shook her head. “With respect, Baroness, we flew across the globe and drove through the night because we were told this was serious. Soviet agents with real threats—not religious cranks with delusions of—”
The Baroness’s hands came up.
It wasn’t a gesture. It was a display.
She held her shattered hands out over the table, her bandages stark white in the lamplight, the fingers beneath them twisted at angles that made my stomach turn even now.
“Do these look like the work of monks or priests? The acts of religious men?” Her voice was quiet.
That was what made it terrible.
“They held me in a room with no windows, very little light, and only the sounds of questions and screaming—and the screaming was mine.” She didn’t look away from the woman’s face.
“They broke my fingers one by one—and not quickly. They took their time. They wanted information, yes, but they also wanted me to understand what I was facing and what happens to people who oppose them.”
The woman had gone very still.
“Otto Hartmann,” the Baroness continued, “was my aide for decades. He was my friend and the closest thing I had to family after my husband died.” Her voice cracked, just slightly, before she steadied it.
“He came for me. He came alone—an old man with a pistol and more courage than sense. When these two”—she gestured at Thomas and me—“found him, he was dying from wounds he had sustained attempting to get me out of that place. He died in this farmhouse two days ago.”
No one moved. I barely breathed.
“Heinrich Schweizer, a journalist, was going to help me expose them. They killed him in his hotel room and made it look like a heart attack.” The Baroness’s eyes were bright with something that might have been tears—or rage.
I couldn’t tell. “Ernst Vogel, Klaus Brenner, and Anna Richter. I could give you a dozen more names. Good people. Brave people. People who saw what was happening and tried to stop it. Each died at the hands of this Order and their Soviet masters.”
She lowered her hands slowly, again resting them on the table.
“So do not sit in this kitchen in my country and tell me about cranks.” Her voice was barely above a whisper now, but it filled the room.
“Do not tell me that I am wasting time. I have given forty years of my life to protecting this nation. I have given my hands. I have given my friends. I will give whatever I have left to stop these people, with or without your help.”
The CIA woman sat frozen. Whatever she had expected when she walked into the farmhouse, it wasn’t this.
Marcus shifted uncomfortably. Danny stared at the table. Eddie’s expression hadn’t changed, but something in his posture had shifted—respect, perhaps, or simple recognition of what they were dealing with.
“I apologize,” the woman said finally. Her voice was different now, softer and stripped of its earlier condescension. “Please—continue.”
The Baroness held her gaze for a long moment, then she nodded once.
“The Order is not the true threat,” she said. “They are merely an instrument. The hand that holds the knife . . .” She paused. “Belongs to Moscow.”
That got the woman’s attention. She leaned forward.
“Explain,” she said.
“Stalin is not a fool. He knows he cannot take Western Europe by force without triggering a war he cannot win, certainly not after what Hitler did to his countrymen. So he has found other methods.” She tapped the table. “He has turned his gaze toward Switzerland.”
“Neutral Switzerland,” the woman said slowly.
“Neutral, yes, but also the banking center of Europe. We are the heart through which money flows.” The Baroness’s eyes were hard. “Whoever controls Switzerland controls the financial arteries of the continent. Stalin understands this and has been planning this for some time.”
“And the Order?” the woman asked.
“Useful idiots. Or perhaps not so idiotic, as their leaders know exactly what they are doing.” The Baroness spread her ruined hands.
“The Order believes they are saving Europe from communism by installing strong, traditional leadership. They do not understand—or do not care—that Moscow is funding their operation. Soviet money flows through Swiss banks, into the Order’s accounts, paying for bribes, personnel, and infrastructure.
Stalin lets them believe they are fighting godlessness while he uses them to deliver Switzerland into his sphere. ”
The woman was quiet for a moment, processing. “You have proof of the Soviet connection?”
“We have payment records showing money flowing from accounts linked to Soviet intelligence. We have correspondence referencing ‘friends in the East.’ And we have documentation of a systematic campaign to bribe and further compromise Swiss federal ministers.” The Baroness gestured to the stack of documents.
“Emu has seen it. Condor nearly died obtaining it.”
She looked at me.
“It’s real,” I said, nodding. “Soviet fingerprints are all over it.”
The woman turned to her team. There was serious calculation in her eyes. We weren’t facing a fringe group anymore. This was Stalin making a play for the heart of European finance—and, by extension, the world’s money flow.
“All right, we’re tracking,” she said to the Baroness. “Please go on.”
The Baroness drew in a breath, then spoke again, “The Order intends to manufacture a crisis severe enough to trigger an emergency session of the Federal Council. Every document we have recovered points to February 15th—three days from now. The Chamber Session is an old, mostly forgotten procedure from 1847 originally designed to counter existential threats. It grants expanded executive powers and suspends normal oversight.” The Baroness’s voice was flat.
“When the Council convenes, the compromised ministers will push through decrees that consolidate power in the hands of men who answer—knowingly or not—to Moscow.”
“Sounds like a coup,” Marcus said quietly, his first words since entering the kitchen.
“A quiet coup. There would be no Soviet tanks rolling through Bern, no Red Army soldiers, just Swiss ministers passing Swiss laws in a Swiss emergency session.” The Baroness met the woman’s eyes.
“By the time anyone realizes what has happened, resistance becomes treason. Switzerland falls—not to invasion, but to subversion. Stalin gains control of Europe’s neutral ground and its banking center without firing a single shot. ”
The weight of the Baroness’s words settled over us like the snow falling outside.
The CIA woman was quiet for a long moment.
When she spoke, she chose her words carefully.
“If this is real—if Moscow is actually making a play for Switzerland—then it changes everything.” She looked at her team, then back at the Baroness.
“But it doesn’t change my orders. I’m only authorized for observation and security.
What you’re describing—stopping a coup—that’s very active intervention.
That would be the United States taking sides in a Swiss internal matter. ”
“I am not asking you to stop the coup,” the Baroness said. “I am asking you to help me stop it.”
“With respect, ma’am, I don’t see a difference.” The woman’s voice was firm but not unkind. “If my team engages Order or Soviet operatives, even if we only sabotage their sabotage, that’s an act of war. Without authorization from Washington, I can’t do that.”
“Even knowing Moscow is behind it?”
“Especially knowing Moscow is behind it.” She met the Baroness’s eyes.
“If this goes sideways—if we act and it blows up—it’s not just my career; it’s a massive international incident.
We would be handing the Soviets ammunition to claim American interference and paint us as the aggressors.
It could make things worse, not better.”
I watched the Baroness absorb this, watched her calculate, reassess, adapt. Forty years of intelligence work had taught her when to push and when to pivot. This was clearly one of those moments.
“Very well,” she said after a moment. “Then let us discuss what you can do.”
She looked around the table—at the four Americans, at Thomas and me, at Bisch pacing behind where Thomas sat. We were eight people, nine counting the Baroness, though her hands limited her to command.
“I had hoped for more,” she admitted. “With active support, we might have disrupted their operation directly.” She shook her head slowly.
“But you are right. We do not have the numbers for that. Even with your team fully committed, we would be spread too thin. Four heavily guarded targets, possibly more, against eight operatives. The mathematics do not favor us.”
“So what do you propose?” the CIA woman asked.