Read Chapter 25: The Wrong Trade

The convent on Rue des Blancs-Manteaux wore its disguise well. From the street it was just another gray stone face among a row of exhausted buildings—shuttered windows, a dented copper door, a bell pull that looked like it hadn't been answered since the last century. But Lucien knew the city's secret architecture. He'd spent enough years reading the wrong doors to know that the ones that looked most dead were often the most alive.

He pressed the bell three times, paused, pressed twice. A slot slid open at eye level. A woman's face, older than the building, looked out with eyes that had seen too many wars to be surprised by another one.

"I'm here to see the upholsterer's daughter," Lucien said.

The eyes didn't blink. "There's no upholsterer on this street."

"Then I've wasted my walk." Lucien turned to leave.

"Wait."

The door creaked open a hand's width. The nun—if she was a nun; Lucien doubted everything in this city now—studied him with the patience of someone who had learned to read lies the way others read headlines.

"You're the one the runner described. The coal merchant."

It wasn't a question. Lucien nodded anyway.

"Come in quickly. The street has ears that belong to other people."

The door opened just far enough for him to slip through, then closed behind him with a soft, final click. The vestibule smelled of wax and old wood and something cooking that Lucien couldn't identify—maybe turnips, maybe hope. The nun led him down a narrow corridor lined with religious paintings that had been hung slightly crooked, as if the walls themselves were tired of pretending.

"She's in the chapel," the nun said. "She insisted on being moved there. Says the light helps her think."

"Or she wants to be able to see anyone coming through the only entrance."

The nun almost smiled. "You know her well."

"I know her type."

The chapel was small, barely larger than a parlor, with a vaulted ceiling that made every sound seem sacred whether it was or not. Camille lay on a cot that had been pushed between two pews, a blanket pulled up to her chin. Her face was pale beneath the bruise that spread across her left cheekbone like a stain of wine on linen. Her right arm was bandaged from wrist to elbow, and the bandage had the clean look of something recent.

Lucien pulled a wooden chair close to the cot. He didn't sit immediately. He stood for a moment, reading her breathing—shallow but steady—before lowering himself into the chair with a creak that seemed louder than it should have been in the quiet.

Camille's eyes opened. She hadn't been asleep. He could tell from the alertness in them, the way they tracked him before her head turned.

"You came," she said. Her voice was rougher than he remembered, scraped by pain or screaming or both.

"I always come when the price is right."

"Don't." She tried to laugh, and the laugh turned into a cough that made her wince. "Don't do that with me. Not now."

Lucien was quiet for a moment. Then he said, "How bad?"

"Bullet through the shoulder. Missed the bone by a finger's width. The nuns here know their business—they've had practice." She shifted slightly, grimacing. "The betrayal hurts more than the wound."

"The mole."

"Yes." Camille's eyes found his. "Someone in my network tipped off Brandt. Told him exactly where and when we'd be moving the gold. That's the only way the patrol could have arrived so precisely."

"Do you know who?"

"Not yet. But I have suspicions."

"Let me guess." Lucien leaned forward, his voice dropping. "Marcel."

Camille didn't answer immediately. The silence stretched between them, filled by the distant sound of footsteps in the corridor and the soft murmur of women's voices praying somewhere deeper in the building.

"What makes you say his name?" she asked finally.

"Three things." Lucien counted them off on his fingers. "He was the one who arranged the rendezvous point at the safehouse. He had a window of opportunity to send word after the meeting broke up. And he's been asking questions about me—specifically about my movements—that a loyal soldier wouldn't need answers to."

"Your suspicions aren't unique to you." Camille's mouth tightened. "I tried to think of anyone else. Anyone who could have known everything necessary. There was only one name that kept returning to me."

"Marcel."

"Marcel." She said it like she was testing the sound of it, as if saying the name aloud might reveal some hidden truth in its syllables. "He's been with my network since the beginning. He lost his brother to a firing squad at Mont Valérien. His loyalty was never in question."

"Loyalty can be purchased. Especially in this city. Especially now."

"You've never liked him."

"I don't like anyone." Lucien allowed himself a thin smile. "That's how I've survived this long."

Camille closed her eyes for a moment, and when she opened them again, there was something harder in them. "If it is Marcel—if I confirm it—what will you do?"

"What needs to be done."

"You'll kill him."

"If that's what needs to be done, yes." Lucien's voice was flat, uninflected. "I'm not a soldier, Camille. I don't take prisoners. I don't offer mercy. I identify the threat and I remove it."

"And if removing him costs you something you didn't expect?"

"Like what?"

"Like information he's already sold." Camille pushed herself up slightly on her good elbow, her face tight with pain. "Think about it. If Marcel tipped off Brandt about the atelier, that means he knew about the gold. It means he knows about you. It means he's been feeding the Germans information for—who knows how long?—and he's still alive."

Lucien understood immediately. "He's Brandt's man. He's protected."

"Protected and valuable. You can't just eliminate him without Brandt realizing what you've done. And once Brandt realizes you've taken out his eyes inside the Resistance, he'll turn the city upside down to find you."

"So I need to use Marcel before I remove him."

"Exactly." Camille sank back onto the cot, exhaustion pulling at her features. "He's a channel. A channel to Brandt. And channels can be fed—false information, misleading evidence, poison dressed up as truth."

Lucien sat with this for a long moment, turning it over in his mind the way a jeweler might turn a flawed stone, looking for the angle that would make it valuable despite its cracks.

"If Marcel sold us out for the atelier operation," he said slowly, "then he knows I survived. He knows I have the gold—or at least, he knows I was involved in moving it."

"He knows you took most of it from the atelier."

"Then Brandt knows too. By now, Marcel will have reported everything." Lucien's jaw tightened. "Which means Brandt isn't just hunting for the gold. He's hunting for me specifically."

"It means more than that." Camille's voice was barely above a whisper. "It means Marcel can tell Brandt where I am. He knows about the runner. He knows about the network's hideouts. He might even know about this convent."

Lucien stood abruptly. The chair scraped against the stone floor, the sound loud in the chapel's silence. "Then you're not safe here."

"I'm not safe anywhere. Not while Marcel lives and knows what he knows." Camille met his eyes without flinching. "But I'm also not the priority. The gold is. If Brandt gets his hands on that hoard, he's not just a threat to us—he becomes a power broker in his own right. He could fund a private war. He could buy half of Paris."

"The gold is hidden. Brandt doesn't know where."

"Yet. He doesn't know where yet." Camille's voice sharpened. "But Marcel is good. He's patient. He's been inside my network for months, maybe more, and none of us suspected. It's only a matter of time before he pieces together where the gold could have been moved to."

Lucien walked to the chapel window—a small, arched thing of colored glass that cast fractured light across the stone floor. He stared through it at the gray Parisian sky beyond, thinking about the warehouse where the hoard still sat, waiting, vulnerable.

"I need to draw Marcel out," he said. "I need to give him a reason to reveal himself—to make a move that exposes him."

"How?"

Lucien turned back to her, something new hardening in his expression. "I let Brandt find me first."