Read Chapter 17: The Silent Saboteur

The church bells of Rouen were still tolling midnight when Étienne found Chevalier’s second balloon, a sleek passenger craft hidden in a cider barn three miles east of the cathedral. The general had planned an escape route, of course—a man like Chevalier always kept a door open behind him. What Chevalier had not planned was that Étienne would find it first.

He worked by lamplight, his breath misting in the cold. The envelope was silk, Prussian-made, stitched with a maker’s mark he didn’t recognize. The basket was reinforced steel, fitted with a brazier for long-range flight. And in a leather satchel strapped beneath the burner, he found a stack of printed leaflets, crisp and untouched.

He pulled one out. The ink was still sharp.

*Soldiers of France. Your generals are feeding you to the Prussians like cattle to the slaughter. General Delacroix has sold your positions for gold. Ask yourselves why the guns at Chantilly have been silent. Ask yourselves who profits from your deaths.*

Étienne read it twice. The handwriting was Chevalier’s—he recognized the sharp slant of the *g*’s, the way the man crossed his *t*’s with a flourish. The leaflets had been printed here, in Rouen, meant to be dropped on the French lines to sow chaos and confusion before the Prussian advance.

He should burn them. Every instinct of a soldier told him that. But he was no longer a soldier. He was a dead man walking, a traitor by decree, a man who had been handed his brother’s life and told to spend it wisely.

Étienne folded the leaflets and tucked them into his coat.

---

The flight east was silent. The brazier hissed, the silk creaked overhead, and below them the dark sprawl of Normandy gave way to the pale scars of trenches and the dull orange glow of campfires. French campfires. Soldiers who had been told a balloonist named Étienne Vautrin had bombed his own countrymen.

He steered by the stars, keeping the Seine to his south. The parcel sat heavy in his inner pocket, Rothschild’s unopened mystery, and Chevalier’s bomb lay wrapped in canvas at his feet. The telegrams crackled against his chest. He had evidence, proof of collusion, names and dates and orders that would hang half the French high command if they ever saw the light of day.

But evidence required a judge. Proof required a trial. And what Étienne had was a basket, a burner, and a brother who would be transferred to Berlin before the week was out unless he did something impossible.

He reached the French lines at first light.

The trenches stretched below him like claw marks on the earth, and he saw them—hundreds of men, huddled in the mud, faces turned up toward the sound of his burner. He saw a colonel point at him. He saw a soldier raise a rifle.

Étienne pulled the leaflets from his coat and threw them into the wind.

They scattered like white birds, catching the dawn light, drifting down toward the men who had once called him brother. He watched them fall, watched the soldiers snatch them from the air, watched the first faces turn to confusion and then to something uglier.

*General Delacroix has sold your positions for gold.*

He couldn’t read the words from this height, but he knew them by heart. He had written nothing—Chevalier had written it all—but he was the one dropping them. He was the messenger. And in war, messengers were the first to be shot.

The rifle cracked before he could react. The ball tore through the silk above his head, and the balloon lurched. He banked hard, cursing, reaching for the burner controls, and that was when he saw the second balloon rising from behind the treeline to the east.

It was French military issue, sky-blue envelope, a tricolor streamer trailing from the basket. And in the basket stood a man in a general’s uniform, his face half-hidden by a raised collar.

Delacroix.

No. Étienne shook his head, squinting against the glare. The man was too tall, too broad. Delacroix was a thin, nervous man who smelled of pomade and fear. This officer held himself like a man who had never doubted an order in his life.

The second balloon closed the distance fast. The officer raised a speaking trumpet, and his voice carried across the gap between them.

“Vautrin! Land now, and I may let you live long enough to explain yourself.”

Étienne didn’t answer. He banked away, but the wind was against him, and the other balloon was faster. A grappling hook arced across the space between them, caught the ropes of his basket, and bit deep.

He drew his pistol, but the officer was already aboard, swinging over the gap with a soldier’s brutality, landing hard enough to rock the basket. Étienne fired, but the shot went wide, and then the officer’s fist caught him across the jaw and the world went white.

---

When he came to, he was on his knees on the cold flagstones of a roofless chapel. The officer stood over him, holding the leaflets.

“You dropped these,” the officer said. “Did you really think men would read them and rise up? That they would turn on their own generals because of a few printed words from a dead balloonist?”

Étienne spat blood. “They’ll read them.”

“They did read them.” The officer’s smile was thin and cruel. “And then my men collected every last one. The soldiers you hoped to reach will never see them. They will see only your corpse, hanging from the walls of Paris as a traitor.”

“You’re not Delacroix.”

“Delacroix is a coward and a fool. He believes he is in command. He does not know that I have been feeding his orders to the Prussians for six months. He does not know that his own daughter helped me.”

Étienne went cold. “Juliette.”

The officer’s smile widened. “She was useful. A pretty face in the mail office, a way to intercept dispatches, a way to know when the aeronauts would be flying. She believed she was helping the resistance. She did not know what her messages contained.”

“Where is she?”

“Safe. For now.” The officer crouched, bringing his face close to Étienne’s. “I am General Armand Beaumont. You have heard of me, perhaps.”

Étienne had. Beaumont was a hero of the Algerian campaigns, a man whose name was whispered in the war ministry with a mixture of awe and fear. He had been presumed dead at Sedan. Instead, he had been building his own army within an army.

“What do you want?”

“The same thing Chevalier wanted. The meeting at Chantilly. The command is gathering there today to plan the final defense. I intend to be present—not as a guest, but as the man who controls the outcome. You will fly me there. You will land within the perimeter. And when I have killed them all, you will take the blame.”

“And if I refuse?”

Beaumont gestured, and two soldiers dragged a third figure into the chapel. She was bound and gagged, her dark hair matted with blood, but her eyes were furious and unmistakable.

Juliette.

Étienne lunged, but the soldiers pushed him back.

“You will fly me,” Beaumont said, “or I will have her shot in front of you, then find another way to Chantilly. The choice is yours, but I advise you to make it quickly. The meeting begins at noon.”

The parcel was still in his coat. Rothschild’s parcel, the ransom note, the telegrams that would expose them all. None of it mattered if Juliette died here.

“I’ll fly you,” Étienne said.

Beaumont smiled and extended his hand. “Excellent. Then let us be on our way.”

Étienne took the general’s hand, and as he did, his fingers brushed the man’s collar. There, hidden beneath the wool, was a gold chain.

And at the end of the chain, a small, round locket.

Étienne’s breath caught. He had seen a locket like that before—on a dead pilot’s chest, a photo of Lucien inside, a photo that had been scratched and torn in a way that suggested a third person had once stood beside his brother.

A third person with a face that someone had wanted erased.

He looked up at Beaumont, at the hard lines of the man’s face, at the eyes that were the same dark brown as his own, and he felt the world tilt beneath him.

“You’re not just a general,” Étienne said slowly. “You’re something else.”

Beaumont’s smile didn’t waver. “We are all something else, Étienne. The question is whether we have the courage to admit what we are.”

He led Étienne toward the balloon, Juliette stumbling behind them, and Étienne’s mind raced with the impossible shape of what he had just discovered—and what he still didn’t know.