Read Chapter 11: The Cellar

The cellar stairs ended in black water. Jack felt the stone step give way beneath his boot, then the shock of cold seeping through the leather as he stepped down into the flooded passage. Beside him, Henri clicked his tongue—the sound of a man confirming a thing he already knew.

“The Baron said the cache is in a dry locker,” Henri whispered. “Set above the waterline.”

Jack swept his flashlight low, shielding the beam with his palm. The cellar was a vaulted stone chamber, half-submerged, with a brick shelf running along the far wall. Crates and a tarpaulin-wrapped bundle sat on the shelf, dry as bone.

“That’s us,” he said.

They waded forward, boots squelching in the stagnant water. Jack reached the shelf first. Under the tarp: three wooden crates stamped with German ordnance marks. He pried the lid off the first. Inside, wrapped in oilcloth, lay blocks of TNT and a coil of time fuse. The second crate held detonators, copper tubes packed in straw.

“They’re real,” Henri said. “The Baron kept his word.”

Jack grunted and began loading the explosives into the canvas rucksack he’d brought. “Tell me that when we’re out of here.”

Hoofbeats sounded overhead. They both froze. Horses, then the crunch of boots on gravel, and a voice booming in German, sharp and unmistakable: the sound of a command. More voices answered. The patrol had arrived.

Henri’s eyes went wide in the dark. “They come all the way inside?”

“No,” Jack said, but he was already moving. He shoved the last block of TNT in the rucksack and slung it over his shoulder. “Move. Back the way we came.”

They sloshed toward the stairwell. But the voices grew louder, closer—and then a key scraped in a lock. The heavy cellar door swung open at the top of the stairs, spilling torchlight down the steps.

Two German soldiers started down, rifles slung, one carrying a lantern.

Jack pressed himself against the stone wall beside the stairwell. Henri mirrored him on the opposite side. The water lapped gently around their waists. The German soldiers spoke as they descended, boots echoing off the stone, their voices casual—the tone of men checking a storeroom, not hunting enemies. Their boots hit the water. They stopped a few feet into the cellar, swinging the lantern across the crates and shelves.

One of them had a face Jack could see clearly now: young, fair-haired, an unlit cigarette tucked behind his ear. The man reached for the shelf.

The one with the lantern pulled up short. “Tarp’s been moved.”

Jack moved before the words finished. He came out of the water low and fast, his knife already free from his belt sheath. The fair-haired soldier turned, mouth open, and Jack caught him across the throat with the blade in one clean sweep. A gurgle, a splash, and the man folded into the water.

The lantern-bearer dropped his lamp and scrambled for his rifle. Henri lunged from the opposite side, but his hands were slick and he grasped only the soldier’s collar, the two of them struggling in the waist-deep water. The German’s boot slipped on the algae-slicked floor and he went down, dragging Henri with him.

Jack was there. He grabbed the man’s head and drove it against the stone step. There was a crack that wasn’t water noise. The soldier went still.

For a second, all they heard was their own ragged breathing.

Then above them—the cellar door banged open. A shout, followed by a burst of gunfire into the dark stairwell. The bullets whined and ricocheted off the stone walls, sending sparks across the water.

“Go!” Jack grabbed Henri’s arm and hauled him toward the flooded drain tunnel they’d come through. They dove into the black mouth of the passage as another volley plastered the wall behind them. Gunfire followed them down the tunnel, muted by water and stone, but growing distant as they pushed against the slow current.

They surfaced in the chapel ruins, gasping, soaked, the rucksack heavy and wet between them. The alarm bell from the château began to clang across the valley, a frantic, iron pulse.

Henri spat water, then grabbed Jack’s shoulder, forcing him to look. Against the brightening sky, figures moved on the château terrace—soldiers pouring out of the main doors. Between them, in the torchlight, a man in a velvet coat was being dragged by two officers.

The Baron. His head was bloodied, his feet barely holding him upright as the Germans hauled him toward a waiting staff car.

Henri took a step forward. Jack caught his arm and held him fast.

“No,” Jack said. “We have the explosives. That’s what he’d want.”

Henri’s face was a mask of fury, then grief. He pulled his arm free, but he didn’t move. He just watched as the car’s engine turned over and the Baron was pushed into the back seat. The doors slammed. The staff car rolled out through the château gates, its headlights sweeping across the marsh.

The alarm bell kept ringing.

Jack hefted the rucksack—heavier now. He looked at Henri. Henri looked at the empty road where the car had gone.

“We still have tonight,” Jack said. “The bridge.”

Henri turned slowly, something hard setting into his face. “Yes,” he said quietly. “We do.”

But even as he said it, searchlights split the sky to the east, and the distant sound of trucks grinding gears rose from the German garrison. The area was waking up. And now, with the Baron taken, they would be moving blind.