Read Chapter 13: The Clockmaker's Twist

The clockmaker’s shop smelled of oil and old brass. A hundred faces stared from the walls—clocks of every size, their pendulums frozen mid-swing, as if the entire room held its breath. Behind the counter, a thin man with wire spectacles and a leather apron watched them enter, his hands never straying from the watch he was repairing.

“We are looking for a repair,” Marchand said, the code Anna had written on the note. “A chronometer that loses time in the cold.”

The clockmaker set down his tweezers. He studied Pavel, then Marchand, with the unhurried gaze of a man who judged everything by its mechanism. Without a word, he jerked his head toward a curtained doorway at the back of the shop. Marchand did not move.

“You are expected,” the clockmaker said, his French flat and provincial. “Go through. The woman is waiting.”

Marchand looked at Pavel. The young nobleman’s face was pale, his fingers worrying the edge of his coat. He wanted this. Whatever waited behind that curtain, Pavel needed it the way a drowning man needs air. Marchand had seen that look before, on the faces of men about to charge a machine-gun nest because they no longer believed in escape.

“Stay behind me,” Marchand said.

The back room was smaller, a workshop cluttered with gears and springs scattered across a scarred wooden table. Lantern light threw long shadows against the walls. And there, standing beside a shelf of stopped clocks, was a woman.

She had the same sharp cheekbones as Pavel, the same pale eyes, but where Pavel was soft, she was cut steel. Her dark hair was pulled back severely, and she wore a man’s coat over a simple dress. She did not smile when they entered.

“Pavel,” she said. Her voice was quiet, almost gentle, but it held no warmth.

“Anna.” Pavel took a step toward her, then stopped, as if an invisible wall had risen between them. “I thought you were dead.”

“Almost, twice,” she said. “The Hawk’s men are thorough. They found my contact in Mannheim, my safe house in Karlsruhe. They know I am here—it is only a matter of hours before they close the streets.” She looked at Marchand. “You are the courier. The French soldier.”

“I am the man keeping your brother alive,” Marchand said.

Anna’s mouth tightened. “Then you are more honest than he has been.”

Pavel’s face flushed. “Anna, there is no time for your accusations. The ledger—we must get it to London, to the contact. He is waiting.”

“There is no contact in London,” Anna said flatly.

The words hung in the air. Pavel blinked as if struck.

“What are you saying?” he asked, his voice cracking.

“I am saying the man you call the Vienna stranger was never a friend to the revolution,” Anna said, stepping closer. Her eyes were hard, unyielding. “He was a broker. He paid you to steal the ledger from the Imperial archives, and then he was going to sell it to the highest bidder. London, Paris, Rome—whoever paid first.”

“That is a lie.” Pavel’s hand went to the ledger inside his coat. “He promised the names would be used to expose the bankers who funded the war. He promised justice.”

“He promised you money,” Anna said. “He promised you four thousand pounds and a new life in America. Do not deny it—I saw his correspondence. I have been his courier longer than you have known him. I introduced you to him.”

Marchand’s hand drifted toward the pistol in his belt. The betrayal in Pavel’s face was shifting into something darker, and he had seen men with that look do foolish things.

“Why?” Pavel’s voice was barely a whisper. “Why would you do this to me?”

“Because you were going to give the ledger to the British,” Anna said, and for the first time, her cold mask cracked, something raw beneath. “The British, who starved our people in the blockade, who armed the Whites, who want nothing but to tear the revolution apart. The names in that ledger could topple the French government—and you were going to sell it to the men who would use it to drown our cause in blood.”

“Our cause?” Pavel laughed, brittle and sharp. “Our father was killed by your Bolsheviks. Our mother died in a prison cell that your comrades filled. There is no ‘our’ cause, Anna. There is only what you have become.”

“I have become what I had to be,” she said. “And I will not let you sell our family’s name, or the revolution, to the highest bidder.” She drew a small pistol from her coat, aiming at the ledger’s outline beneath Pavel’s hand. “Give it to me, Pavel. Let me burn it. That is the only way this ends without blood.”

Marchand stepped between them, his own pistol drawn and leveled at Anna. “No one is burning anything until I understand what I am carrying,” he said, his voice low and hard. “I have dragged this boy across Germany, through border crossings and gunfights, on the promise that this book would serve a noble purpose. Now you tell me it is merchandise. So I will ask once: whose price is this ledger meant to meet?”

Anna’s eyes shifted to him. She was calculating, he could see it, weighing him, measuring whether he was an enemy or an obstacle. But before she could answer, the front door of the shop crashed open.

A single gunshot rang out, followed by a shout in German—sharp, guttural, unmistakable order. The clockmaker cried out in the front room, and then the sound of a body hitting the floor.

Marchand moved. He grabbed Pavel by the collar and shoved him toward the back window, firing two shots toward the curtained doorway to keep heads down. Anna fired past him, covering their retreat, and then she was beside them, smashing the window frame with the butt of her pistol.

“Go!” she shouted, her voice cutting through the chaos. “Run, I will hold them.”

Marchand dragged Pavel through the shattered window, glass biting into his shoulder. He landed hard on the cobblestones of an alley, rolled, and came up with his pistol ready. Pavel was beside him, shaking, the ledger clutched to his chest like a holy relic.

Inside the shop, more gunfire erupted, and then a woman’s scream that was cut short.

Marchand pulled Pavel down the alley, running into the dark.