Read Chapter 23: The Rescue's Irony

The gendarme’s name was Inspector Bartel, and he smelled of stale wine and regret. LaRoche had found him in a Nancy brasserie, nursing a glass of absinthe that he claimed was medicinal. Bartel had been cashiered from the Sûreté three years ago for taking bribes from the wrong people—or perhaps the right people who later fell from power. Either way, he owed Marchand. A debt from 1916, when Marchand had pulled him out of a shell crater at Verdun and carried him on his back through four hundred meters of mud and machine-gun fire.

“The house is on Rue des Lilas,” Bartel said, drawing a rough map on a napkin. His hand shook. “Number fourteen. Discreet little place. They use it for off-the-books interrogations. No windows on the ground floor, but there’s a coal chute at the back that’s never locked. The guard rotation is sloppy—one man on the front door, another patrolling the perimeter every twenty minutes.”

Marchand studied the napkin. His wound throbbed beneath the bandage LaRoche had helped him wrap in the car. The doctor in the village had done what he could, but the bullet had carved a groove through his side, and every breath was a reminder of Étienne’s betrayal.

“How do you know all this?” Marchand asked.

Bartel shrugged. “I used to do work for them. Before they decided I wasn’t trustworthy.” He drained the glass. “The man who runs it—they call him the Hawk. Doesn’t use his real name. Nasty piece of work. If your Russian friend has been in his custody for more than a day, I’d expect the worst.”

“He’s alive,” Marchand said, more to himself than to Bartel.

“If you say so.”

LaRoche shifted in the booth, his journalist’s eyes gleaming. “Can you get us inside?”

Bartel looked at Marchand. “I can get *him* inside. You stay in the car, monsieur. Journalists have a way of getting people shot.”

Marchand checked his watch. It was 2 a.m. The streets of Nancy were silent, slick with recent rain. “How long until the next patrol?”

“You’ll have a fifteen-minute window once you hear the church bell toll the half-hour.”

“And if I’m not out by then?”

Bartel’s smile was grim. “Then you’ll be dead, and I’ll deny ever meeting you.”

---

The coal chute was exactly where Bartel had said it would be, tucked behind a stack of rotting crates. Marchand pried the iron grate loose with his knife, biting down on a strip of leather as the movement tore at his wound. He slid through feet-first, dropping onto a pile of coal that cushioned his landing but sent black dust spiraling into the dark.

He was in a cellar. The air was damp, thick with the smell of mildew and something else—something metallic. Blood. He drew his pistol, a captured Lüger he’d taken off a dead German officer in 1918, and moved toward the stairs.

The house above was quiet. Too quiet. Marchand had been through enough raids to know that silence often meant a trap, but he had no choice. Pavel was here. The ledger was here. And every hour Pavel spent in this place was an hour closer to death.

He climbed the stairs, testing each step before committing his weight. The door at the top was unlocked. He eased it open.

The corridor was dim, lit by a single gas lamp at the far end. To his left, a door stood ajar, golden light spilling from within. Voices drifted out. One was low, calm, with the clipped precision of a man accustomed to command. The Hawk. The other was higher, softer, and Marchand’s blood went cold.

He knew that voice.

He pressed himself against the wall and edged closer, peering through the gap.

Anna stood by the window, her back to the door. She was dressed in traveling clothes, her dark hair pulled back severely. The Hawk sat behind a desk, Pavel slumped in a chair across from him, his face a ruin of bruises and dried blood. But Pavel’s eyes were open. And they were fixed on Anna with an expression Marchand had never seen before—not pain, not fear, but betrayal.

“You told me the ledger was in his possession,” Anna said, her voice tight with anger. “You told me that if I helped you find the old man, the ledger would be mine.”

“It was in his possession.” The Hawk’s tone was patient, almost amused. “But he gave it to the Frenchman. And the Frenchman, clever fellow that he was, passed it to someone else before he died.”

Marchand’s hand tightened on the pistol. *He thinks I’m dead.*

“Then where is it?” Anna demanded.

“That,” the Hawk said, “is what our friend Mr. Orlov is about to tell us.” He gestured to Pavel, who spat a mouthful of blood onto the floor.

“I told you,” Pavel said, his voice ragged. “I don’t know. Marchand had it. I haven’t seen it since the château.”

“But you know where he would have taken it,” the Hawk pressed. “You know his mind. Think, Mr. Orlov. If you had a document worth the lives of half the politicians in Europe, where would you hide it?”

Marchand watched Anna step closer to Pavel. Her face was unreadable, but something in her posture shifted—a tensing of the shoulders, a tightening of the jaw. He remembered her in Moscow, remembered the way she had spoken of revolution with such fierce conviction. He had thought it was passion. He had been wrong. It was obsession.

“I will find the ledger,” Anna said, turning to face the Hawk. Her profile was sharp in the lamplight. “With or without your help. But you promised me the resources of your network. You promised me that when I delivered the old man, you would give me the names of your contacts in Petrograd.”

“And I will,” the Hawk said. “Once we have the ledger. You know the terms.”

Anna’s laugh was bitter. “Your terms are always the same. You take everything and leave me with promises.”

“Promises can be quite valuable, when kept by the right people.”

Marchand had heard enough. He pushed the door open, stepping into the room with his pistol raised. “I think you’ll find the terms have changed.”

The Hawk’s hand moved toward his desk drawer, but Marchand’s gun was already trained on his chest. “Don’t.”

Anna spun, her eyes widening. “Jean-Luc—you’re alive.”

“Disappointed?” He kept his gaze on the Hawk, but he could feel her stare burning into him.

“No. Surprised.” She recovered quickly, her composure snapping back into place. “I thought the Hawk’s men had finished you at the château.”

“They were thorough,” Marchand said. “Just not thorough enough.”

Pavel’s voice cut through the tension, cracked and desperate. “Jean-Luc. She’s with him. She’s been with him since Vienna.”

“I know.” Marchand didn’t look at him. He was watching Anna, watching the way her hand had drifted toward the small of her back, where he knew she kept a knife. “I heard.”

Anna smiled—a thin, cold thing. “Then you understand. I’m not working for him. I’m using him. Just as I used you.”

“Used me for what?”

“For passage. For protection. For—” She gestured vaguely. “You were always so eager to be useful, Jean-Luc. It was one of your more charming qualities.”

Marchand felt the words land like blows, but he kept his voice steady. “What do you want with the ledger?”

“The same thing everyone wants. Power. But I intend to use it differently.” Her eyes glittered. “You think I care about the politicians of France and Britain? Their wars, their treaties, their little games? No. The ledger names bankers, Jean-Luc. Swiss bankers, German industrialists, men who funded the Tsar’s regime and now fund the Whites. If I control that list, I control the money. And if I control the money, I can fuel the revolution—the real one, not the hollow thing they built in Petrograd.” Her voice was feverish now, her prettiness dissolving into something sharp and hungry. “Lenin talks of world revolution, but he starves it. He stops at borders. I don’t.”

Pavel lunged against his restraints. “She’s worse than he is,” he spat at Marchand. “The Hawk wants to silence the ledger. She wants to burn it and start her own fire with the ashes.”

The Hawk laughed softly. “I do believe Mr. Orlov has a point.” He was watching Anna with renewed interest. “Perhaps we have been underestimating you, mademoiselle.”

Marchand kept the gun level. “The ledger goes to Switzerland,” he said. “That was the deal.”

“Your deal,” Anna said. “Not mine.”

A shout echoed from the front of the house. Boots pounded on the floorboards above. The Hawk’s eyes flicked toward the door, and in that instant of distraction, Anna moved.

Her hand came up with the knife, but she didn’t throw it at Marchand. She threw it at the Hawk. It buried itself in his shoulder with a wet thud, and he screamed, scrambling for his own weapon. Marchand fired, but the shot went wide as Anna shoved the desk into him, sending him stumbling backward.

Pavel was twisting in his chair, his wrists bloody from the ropes. “Get me out of these!”

Marchand crossed the room, knife out, sawing at the bindings. Behind him, the Hawk roared, and Anna’s voice rang out, sharp and commanding.

“The front door is coming down! They’ve been expecting you, Jean-Luc. The gendarme was part of it.”

Marchand’s blood went cold. Bartel. The map. The fifteen-minute window. It had all been a setup.

He pulled Pavel to his feet. Pavel swayed, barely able to stand, but Marchand wrapped an arm around him and hauled him toward the window.

“Anna,” he said, not looking back. “The ledger will burn before I let you touch it.”

“We’ll see,” she said.

The front door splintered. Marchand threw himself and Pavel through the window in a shower of glass as the sound of gunfire erupted behind them.