I wanted to put my fist through the radio.
The woman who led the American team emerged from the back of the farmhouse, a cigarettedangling from her lips. She’d been making her own calls, coordinating with whoever handled her end of things. Apparently, her fear of discovery was far less than ours. She’d chosen to use the good doctor’s telephone rather than finding an anonymous payphone as we had.
“Anything?” Marcus asked.
“Lots of chatter.” She dropped into a chair, exhaling smoke toward the ceiling. “Swiss military units are moving, and police cordons are going up around the Federal Palace. Something’s happening, but nobody’s saying what.”
“That could be good,” Will said.
“It could be bad, too. Or it could be both.” The woman shrugged. “Welcome to intelligence work.”
Bisch moved through the room to sit on the floor beside the Baroness. I think she was as surprised as the rest of us. His hands extended toward the fire, seeking warmth. Bisch hadn’t spoken since he and Will had returned from the village.
I wondered what he was thinking.
Did he believe we’d succeeded?
Or was he already planning escape routes for when everything fell apart?
Knowing Bisch and the Baroness, they’d likely planned for both.
The radio crackled.
We all froze.
“—and now, continuing our morning programming, we present—”
More Mozart. Fucking great.
A collective exhale drifted through the room.
“I’m going to lose my mind,” Danny said.
“Get in line,” Marcus replied.
The Baroness rose from her chair and tossed her blanket aside. It was a smooth motion, controlled, but I noticed the way she steadied herself against the back of the chair for just a moment. She crossed to the window, her back to us, and stared out at the snow-covered landscape.
“When I was a girl,” she said quietly, “my father told me that Switzerland was different from other nations. We did not have the luxury of size or great military strength. We survived by being useful to everyone and to no one in particular, by making ourselves indispensable. He said that as long as Switzerland remained useful, it would remain free. The moment we became a liability to the great powers, they would devour us without a second thought.”
“And now?” Will asked.
“Now I wonder if he was right.” She turned to face us. “The Order believed they could make Switzerland useful to Moscow. They were not wrong about our value—only about the methods by which they chose to subvert our way of life.”
“The method being a coup,” I said.
“The method being force.” Her eyes were hard. “Switzerland has always understood that survival requires flexibility and accommodation, the ability to bend without breaking. What Lüthi and his conspirators never understood is that we bend by choice, not by compulsion. The moment someone tries to force Switzerland to its knees, every citizen becomes a patriot.”
“You think that’s what’s happening now?” the CIA woman asked. “In that chamber?”
“I think Josef Frei has spent forty years serving this country. I think he has seen threats come and go, crises that would have broken lesser nations. I think—” She stopped and drew a breath. “I think he will do what is right because that is who he is.”
“And if he doesn’t?”
The Baroness didn’t answer.
Another half hour passed.
The Mozart gave way to news—but only local news.
