Read Chapter 24: The Baron's Gamble

They made camp in a ruined cow byre half a mile into the marsh, the roof half-collapsed and the walls still holding the stink of wet hay and manure. Rain had started again—a thin, miserable drizzle that found its way through every gap and soaked them to the bone.

Henri sat with his back against a rotted post, one hand clamped over the wound in his side. The cloth was dark with blood, not just at the edges anymore. Claire had done what she could, but her supplies were running low and the bullet had gone deep. Jack knew what that meant. They all did.

Jack pressed his own shoulder against the wall and forced himself to breathe through the pain. His left arm was nearly useless now. The earlier wound had torn open again in the scramble beneath the bridge, and every movement sent a raw spike through his collarbone. He was running on spite and adrenaline, and both were about empty.

"Can't stay here," Claire said. She was watching the gap in the wall where the marsh met the tree line, her rifle cradled loose across her knees. "They'll sweep this whole basin by dawn."

Jack nodded. "We find another way across. There's got to be fords, shallows—"

"No." Henri's voice was quiet, but it cut through the rain like a blade. He lifted his head from the post, his face gray beneath the grime. "There is no other way. The bridge is the crossing. Everything else is swamp and open ground and they'll cut us down before we're halfway."

"We can't go back to the bridge," Jack said. "They know we're there now. We'd be walking into a firing squad."

"There is one other place," Henri said. "The château."

Jack stared at him. "Your father—"

"Is still there." Henri's jaw tightened. "The Germans did not kill him. Weiss said so. He said my father tried to escape and was caught. There are no cells in the château. They keep prisoners in the wine cellar, and they interrogate them in the Baron's study. If my father is still alive, he knows the castle's electrical system. The detonation lines are wired through the local grid to avoid detection. The bridge is connected to the old power station beneath the château. My father designed it. He would know how to shut it all down."

"Henri, listen to yourself." Jack pushed off the wall and stepped closer, the pain in his shoulder flaring white. "You're talking about walking into a house full of Germans to find a man who might already be dead. Even if he's alive, they've got him under guard. You'd never get near him."

"I would go alone."

"Like hell you would."

"I am not asking permission, Sergeant." Henri's eyes met his, and for the first time Jack saw something hard and unbreakable in them—not the quiet patience of a hunter, but the cold steel of a man who had already made his peace with the cost. "The Baron knows things about the wiring that no one else in France knows. If Kessler orders the detonation now, the primary charges will fire. The secondary charge is armed and hidden. We cannot find it, we cannot stop it, and we are running out of time. My father is the only chance we have."

"And what about Claire?" Jack asked. "What about the mission? You go in there and get yourself killed, we're right back where we started."

Henri didn't flinch. "You will stay here with her. You will watch the bridge. If I do not return by dawn, you go without me. You find another way. But I will return."

Claire set her rifle down and stood slowly. She looked from Jack to Henri, then back. "The Germans will expect stragglers from the failed attempt. There will be no cover story that holds. If you are captured, they will shoot you on sight."

"I know."

"You don't have to do this," she said.

"I do." Henri moved to his feet with a grunt, pressing a hand over the wound. The movement cost him, and Jack could see it—the way his legs wavered, the way he had to grab the post to steady himself. But he did not sit back down. "The key he took when they built the electrical works—he kept it on his person, always. A brass master key. It cuts the main feeder from the château to the grid. If I can get that key, I can cut power to the entire detonation circuit for minutes at a time. Long enough for you to reach the junction box and physically disconnect the charges."

"That's a big if."

"Everything is a big if tonight." Henri tucked his knife into his belt and pulled his coat tight. He was already turning to the door when Jack stepped in front of him.

"You're bleeding through your bandage." Jack's voice was low. "You get five hundred meters on that wound and you'll pass out in the marsh and drown in a foot of water."

"Then I will not pass out."

"Henri, damn it—"

"Jack." Claire's voice cut through, and Jack turned. She was looking at him with that steady, unreadable expression she wore when she'd already decided something. "Let him go. He's right. We can't reach the junction box before Kessler pulls the trigger, and that key is the only thing that buys us time."

Jack stood there a long moment. The rain hammered the broken roof. Somewhere out in the dark, an engine grumbled—a patrol, moving closer. He looked at Henri, at the blood darkening his shirt, at the hard set of his jaw. Then he stepped aside.

"Two hours," Jack said. "If you're not back in two hours, I'm coming for you."

Henri almost smiled. "You would not find me."

"Try me."

Henri nodded once, then slipped out into the rain. Jack watched him go until the dark swallowed him.

---

The château rose out of the black like a wound in the earth. No lights in the windows—they'd blacked them all. But Henri knew this house. He'd grown up in its shadows, climbed its walls, hidden in its cellars during the first war when the Germans had come the other way. His father had built the electrical works to power the entire valley, had tied the bridge's demolition system into the château's grid as a show of faith in the German engineers. A bad joke. His father had always had a dark sense of humor.

He came through the orchard, staying low behind the rows of old trees, and reached the eastern wall of the house without raising an alarm. Two sentries by the main gate, one at the door to the kitchen, but the old servants' entrance was unguarded—rusted hinges and a lock his father had taught him to pick when he was twelve.

The cellar smelled of wine and damp stone. He moved past the racks of bottles, deeper into the dark, until he heard voices. They drifted faintly through a grated vent in the ceiling—harsh, guttural German, then a softer voice answering in French.

The Baron's study. His father was alive.

Henri climbed the stairs to the study's service door, the one hidden behind the tapestry, and pressed his ear to the wood. The voices resolved. The German speaking was Kessler—Henri knew that cold, precise tone. And the other voice, shaking but controlled, was his father.

"You told me the lines were true," Kessler said. "You told me the bridge would fall when I ordered it."

"It will."

"Then why is there muddy water on my floor?" There was a scrape of a chair. "Why are my guards dead? Why is there a hole in the fencing wire that you installed, and why does the alarm at the junction box read tampered?"

"I don't know. I have been here, as you see."

"You have been here, yes. But your son has been here as well." Kessler's voice dropped. "Your son, who is now a traitor to the Reich. Your son, who knows this bridge better than any man alive. And if I cannot find him, Baron, I will make you irrelevant. I will blow the bridge tonight, with every charge I have, and damn the schedule. The invasion will be delayed, but not stopped. And you will watch it burn from a rope."

Henri heard his father make a sound—a small, quiet breath. Then the Baron spoke, and there was something almost like relief in his voice.

"The master key," he said slowly. "The one to the electrical substation."

"Yes. Where is it?"

"It is not in my pocket." The Baron laughed, a dry, brittle sound. "I gave it to the man who cleans the fireplaces. For safekeeping. He is too stupid to know what it opens."

Kessler barked an order, boots stomping across the floor. Henri heard the door slam, and then his father's voice, quieter now, almost to himself.

"Forgive me. It is the oldest trick in the book. But it worked."

Henri pressed his hand to the door, and then he turned and went back down into the cellar. He knew where the fireplaces were cleaned. He knew the man who did it. But he also knew that Kessler would find the servant within minutes.

He had to get there first.