Read Chapter 28: The Bait in the Cellar

The convent’s cellar smelled of damp stone and candle wax, a smell Lucien had come to associate with survival and its costs. Camille lay on the cot against the far wall, her bandaged shoulder white against the gloom, and Colette stood over the map spread across the wine-stained table, her finger tracing the Rue de Neuilly.

“Brandt’s house is a fortress during the day,” Colette said, not looking up. “But at night, he keeps only two guards. One at the front door, one patrolling the garden. The safe is in his study, behind the painting of the Rhine. The combination is—”

“I don’t care about the combination,” Lucien cut in. “We’re not there to read his ledgers. We’re there to take what’s mine and burn the rest.”

Colette finally looked at him, her eyes hard in the low lamplight. “You’ll need the ledgers to know where the gold has gone. Brandt doesn’t keep bars in his house. He’s not a fool.”

“He’s a fool if he thinks I’ll take half of nothing.”

Camille shifted on the cot, wincing. “She’s right, Lucien. You can’t walk in blind. The gold has left the atelier. The question is where Brandt moved it.”

“To Switzerland,” Lucien said flatly. “He told me himself. The money is laundered through Geneva. He bragged about it like a child with a stolen toy.”

Colette’s fingers stopped on the map. She looked at him with sudden sharpness. “When did he tell you this?”

“Two days ago. In his office at the Majestic.”

She straightened, her mouth tightening. “That’s not possible.”

“I was there. I heard it myself.”

“No,” Colette said slowly, “that’s not what I mean. The gold was moved three nights ago. I have a contact at the Gare de Lyon who watches freight manifests for the Resistance. A shipment matching the weight and description of your hoard left Paris in a sealed diplomatic car—destination Zurich via Basel.”

Lucien felt the cold settle in his chest. “Three nights ago?”

“Before you ever met with Brandt,” Colette confirmed. “Before he summoned you. Before he demanded his fifty percent.”

Camille propped herself up on one elbow, her face pale. “Then he was never bargaining. He was stalling you.”

Lucien’s jaw tightened. The major had played him like a violin. The whole meeting, the theatrical threats, the offer of partnership—all of it was theater designed to keep Lucien busy while the gold slipped across the border. He had walked into Brandt’s office thinking he was the cleverest man in the room. He had been the only man in the room who didn’t know he was a fool.

“Where is the shipment now?” he asked quietly.

“In transit,” Colette said. “It should reach the Swiss border at dawn tomorrow. Brandt arranged an escort of SS couriers from the freight office in Dijon. They’ll take possession at the border crossing in Annemasse.”

“Then we stop it before it crosses.”

Colette shook her head. “There are eight SS riflemen and a machine-gun mounted on the truck. You’re not walking up and asking for your gold back.”

Lucien’s mind was already working. The cellar, the map, the smell of his own failure mixing with the damp—all of it sharpened his focus. He had been outmaneuvered, but the game wasn’t over. The gold was still in France. It was still within reach—for a few hours, at least.

“The courier,” he said. “Who drives it?”

“A man named Kurt Wegner. He’s a Swiss national, works for a trading company in Geneva that runs food and medicines across the border. Brandt has used him before—he’s clean, unsuspected. The SS escort meets him outside Dijon and follows at a distance to the crossing. They don’t want to attract attention until the last leg.”

“How far from Dijon to Annemasse?”

“Six hours by road. They’ll pick him up at a farmhouse outside the city, then escort him south through the night.”

Lucien walked around the table, studying the map. Colette had marked the roads in pencil, with the crossing points and the known checkpoints. It was good work—the work of someone who had planned operations before.

“What about the farmhouse?” he asked.

“What about it?”

“How many men does Wegner have there? Is it just him, or does he have a crew loading the cargo?”

Colette hesitated. “I don’t know. My contact only saw the freight manifest and the escort orders from a bribe at the Majestic. He didn’t watch the farmhouse.”

“Then we find out.”

Lucien straightened and looked at Camille. She met his eyes, and he saw the objection forming before she spoke.

“You can’t do this alone,” she said.

“I’m not going alone. Colette comes with me. She knows the roads, she knows the crossing.”

“And who watches the convent?”

“We lock the door and hide in the cellar,” Lucien said. “Two hours, that’s all we need. If we move now, we can reach the farmhouse near Dijon by midnight, deal with Wegner, and be on the road to the border before the SS realizes their courier isn’t coming.”

Camille was already shaking her head. “Too many variables. If Wegner has a radio, if the escort checks on him early, if the farmhouse is guarded—”

“If, if, if,” Lucien snapped. “There is no play without risk. I’ve lost the gold once. I won’t lose it twice.”

Colette’s gaze moved between them. “I’m not your soldier,” she said. “I’m not going to walk into a gunfight with no plan and a single pistol between the two of us.”

“You have a better idea?”

She was quiet for a moment, then said, “We don’t hit the farmhouse. We hit Wegner on the road.”

Lucien’s eyebrow rose. “Explain.”

“The escort meets him outside Dijon and follows at a distance. If we take him before the rendezvous—on the farm road, where he’s alone—then we don’t fight eight SS men. We fight one driver. We take the truck, we take the gold, and we use Wegner’s papers to cross the border before dawn. The SS waits at the farmhouse for a courier who never arrives.”

It was audacious. It was simple. It was exactly the kind of plan Lucien would have made himself, if he’d had the same information. He looked at Colette with new respect.

“Who taught you how to think like that?” he asked.

“Nobody,” she said. “I learned by surviving.”

Camille pushed herself upright, ignoring the wince of pain. “What about Marcel? He’s still out there. If he hears you’re moving, he’ll tell Brandt.”

“Marcel doesn’t know about any of this,” Lucien said. “He thinks I’m still playing the cooperative partner, waiting for Brandt’s fifty percent to materialize. Brandt thinks the same. They won’t expect me to strike until the gold is safely in Switzerland.”

“And if you fail?”

Lucien met her eyes. “Then I’ll be dead, so it won’t matter.”

He turned to Colette. “We move in twenty minutes. Pack light—one change of clothes, the pistol you’ve got, and whatever else you can put in a coat pocket. We take the convent’s motorcar and drive east under cover of darkness.”

Colette nodded once, sharply. “I’ll be ready.”

She left the room, her footsteps quick on the stone stairs. Camille watched her go, then looked at Lucien.

“She’s not who she says she is,” Camille said quietly.

Lucien paused. “What do you mean?”

“I don’t know. But I saw her hands while she was studying the map. The callouses on her fingers—that’s not from secretarial work, and it’s not from holding a pistol. That’s from handling a rifle with a wooden stock, day after day. That’s soldier’s hands.”

Lucien heard her, but he didn’t slow. “She can have all the secrets she wants. As long as she helps me get the gold back, she can be whoever she needs to be.”

“And when she turns them on you?”

He pulled on his coat. “Then I’ll deal with it when it happens. But right now, I have a courier to catch and a fortune to reclaim. I’ll worry about Colette’s secrets when we’re both standing on Swiss soil.”

He left Camille with the map and the candle, her wound seeping red through the bandage, her doubt biting at his heels as he climbed toward the night air. Whatever Colette was hiding, he would find out soon enough. On the road. When it was too late to turn back.