Read Chapter 25: The Forgotten List

The wind carried the smell of coal smoke and cold iron as Étienne climbed into the basket. The Prussian champion, a broad-shouldered man named Klausner, was already aloft in his own balloon fifty yards away, his envelope a taut, arrogant red against the gray morning sky. The camp's prisoners had been herded to the fence to watch, and Étienne found Lucien among them, leaning on a comrade's shoulder, his face pale but his eyes sharp.

Marchand stood at the mooring rope, his hands buried in his coat. He gave Étienne a single nod. The bomb was in his possession, hidden in a bread loaf in the officers' mess. The plan was simple in design, monstrous in execution: fly the race, cut low over the infirmary yard, drop the bomb on the powder magazine, and use the chaos to pull Lucien through the fence gap that the sergeant—if he kept his word—would leave unguarded.

But none of that mattered if the iron weight Kohl had hidden in the basket wasn't found and removed.

Étienne crouched, running his hands along the basket's wicker floor. He'd searched it twice during the night, finding nothing. The weight was cunningly placed, somewhere he couldn't reach without dismantling the craft. His fingers brushed a loose seam near the forward edge, and he pried at it with his nails. The wicker gave with a dry crack, revealing a lead block the size of a brick, wrapped in oilcloth.

He had just pulled it free when Kohl's voice rang out from the viewing platform. "Gentlemen! Take your positions. The race begins at the sound of the cannon."

Étienne shoved the weight into his coat and straightened. Klausner was watching him, a thin smile on his face. The Prussian knew. Of course he knew. Kohl's champion was in on the rigging.

The balloon bobbed impatiently. Étienne's mind raced. He needed the weight gone, but if he threw it out now, every eye in the camp would see it fall. He looked down at his coat. It was heavy with the thing's mass, and the seam of the race path would take him low over the treeline—a moment of cover.

The cannon fired.

With a lurch, the ground fell away. Étienne fed coal to the burner, and the envelope drank the heat, pulling him skyward. Klausner's balloon rose in tandem, the two craft ascending like dueling swords. The prisoners cheered—a ragged, desperate sound that carried even above the wind. Étienne didn't dare look back at Lucien. He kept his eyes on the course.

The race route was a great northern arc over the forest, then a sharp turn west across open fields, and a finish line marked by a flagpole near the camp's east gate. Kohl had boasted it was five miles. Étienne knew it was four, and that guards were stationed at every quarter-mile with rifles and orders to shoot any balloon that deviated.

Klausner pulled ahead immediately. His craft was lighter, better rigged. Étienne let him go. He needed distance from the camp first, a moment where the guards' attention was on the flight, not on him.

"You're losing." The voice came from beneath the basket rim, small and tinny. Étienne's heart nearly stopped. He leaned over the edge and peered down. Strapped to the underside of the basket was a small speaking tube, one of the modern Confinement devices the French had experimented with. A wire ran from it down to the ground.

He'd missed it in his search. Kohl was listening.

"Don't be alarmed, Vautrin. I simply wished to know if you planned to honor our agreement."

Étienne swallowed. His hands were shaking as he reached into his coat and pulled free the iron weight. He had one chance.

"I plan to fly the race," he said, keeping his voice level. "Your man is faster. I'll lose honestly."

"Good. Losing is wise. The alternative is unpleasant."

The wire twitched, then went silent. Étienne didn't wait. As the balloon crested the treeline, he hurled the weight out of the basket. It tumbled end over end, crashing through the bare branches below, too far from the camp for any guard to see it fall.

The balloon rose, impossibly light now. Klausner was still ahead, but the gap was closing.

Étienne reached into his pocket for the map he'd kept of the race route, and his fingers brushed something else—paper, folded and rough-edged. He pulled it out. It was the list he'd lost the night he was captured, the list of French agents embedded in the Prussian command.

He'd forgotten he'd tucked it into his pocket's inner lining. He scanned the names, his heart pounding. Most of them were unknown to him—code names, supply officers, a woman who ran a laundry near the front. But the fifth name stopped him cold.

Captain Wilhelm Brandt. Prussian liaison to the command staff at this very camp.

His stomach turned. Brandt was Kohl's adjutant, the man who stood at the commandant's right hand during every roll call, every inspection. He was the officer who had handed Étienne the water when he'd first been brought in, who had helped carry Lucien to the infirmary.

He was also, according to the list, the chief orchestrator of Operation Dove—the peace envoy mission that had sent Étienne into the skies with a fake passenger and a bomb that was meant to look like a French assassination attempt on Prussian soil.

The trap wasn't Kohl's. It was Brandt's. Kohl was a pawn. And Brandt was standing at the finish line right now, watching the race.

Étienne looked up. Klausner's balloon was turning west, making the final approach. Below, the open fields stretched out, and in the distance, the flagpole rose near the camp's east gate. Figures stood around it. He squinted, picking out the shape of Kohl's broad shoulders, and beside him, a slimmer figure—Brandt.

The wind shifted. Étienne corrected his course, but the balloon was moving faster now, nearly level with Klausner. He had to make a choice.

If he flew the race, he'd land on the finish line with a traitor waiting for him, a traitor who knew who Étienne was, who knew he'd come back to rescue his brother. Brandt would see his face and know the mission had failed. He'd kill him on the spot, and Lucien would die in that infirmary.

If he broke course, veered left over the train depot where Kohl had parked a supply of artillery shells, he'd trigger the guards' shoot-to-kill orders. But he'd draw attention away from the camp, away from Marchand's bomb. He'd give the escape a chance.

But he'd also be dead before the balloon could land.

He looked down at the list in his hand. The paper was creased, worn from being carried through his capture, his escape, his mad flight back into enemy territory. He'd thought he lost it in the crash. He'd been wrong.

The wind roared. Klausner was a hundred yards ahead now, banking toward the flagpole. Below, the guards raised their rifles in the traditional salute. The finish line was near.

Étienne folded the list and tucked it back into his pocket. He looked at Brandt, watching from the finish, and for a moment, their eyes met across the empty field.

Brandt smiled.

It was a calm, knowing smile. The smile of a man who had already won.

Étienne reached for the burner. He had seconds to decide, but the decision had already been made for him. He couldn't land on that field. He couldn't face Brandt with his brother still in chains, with Marchand's bomb still ticking in the officers' mess, with the dawn of von Moltke's visit only hours away.

He turned the balloon.

Klausner saw it first. He shouted, a wordless cry of alarm, and the guards at the edge of the field raised their rifles. Kohl's voice blared through a megaphone, ordering him back to course.

Étienne fed the burner. The balloon surged, desperate, light without the iron weight. The ground blurred beneath him, trees, road, a hay cart whose driver stared upward with a slack mouth.

And above the roar of the flame, he heard a single gunshot—not from the guards, but from the finish line. He turned in time to see Brandt lower a smoking pistol, and Kohl stumble backward, a dark bloom spreading across his chest.

Then the world tilted, and the balloon carried him, climbing and alone, toward a sky that no longer made any sense.