Description:
With armed men closing in, Morel and Sophie flee through an underground passage toward the Seine. But as the walls close in and the past resurfaces, Sophie reveals a secret that changes everything.
Chapter 8: The River Escape
The stairs behind the panel were stone — chipped, wet, and steep. Sophie led the way with nothing but a wax-coated candle stub, its flickering flame bouncing shadows off the damp walls.
Morel followed close behind, the coded ledger pressed to his chest, revolver ready in his other hand. Above them, boots pounded across floorboards. Voices barked in Russian-accented French.
“They were KGB?” he whispered.
Sophie nodded without looking back. “Or what’s left of them. They don’t work for Moscow anymore. They work for whoever pays best.”
“And who’s paying for you?”
“That depends,” she said. “On whether they know I kept a second copy.”
They reached the base of the stairs. A low tunnel, barely tall enough to stand, stretched forward into blackness. Water trickled along the center like a quiet metronome. The air smelled of mold and earth — and faintly, strangely, of violets.
“This used to lead to the boat docks,” Sophie said. “Back when Saint-Cloud still had smugglers.”
Morel kept close. “And now?”
“Now, with luck, it leads to breath.”
They moved quickly, splashing through shallow water, the sound of pursuit growing fainter — or maybe just drowned by the weight of the tunnel. Sophie’s candle went out once. She lit it again with trembling fingers, her breath quickening.
Then, without warning, she stopped.
Morel stepped beside her. “What is it?”
She turned to him. “You asked why I stayed silent. Why I let them think I was dead.”
“You had no choice.”
“I did,” she said. “But I had someone to protect.”
She reached into her coat and pulled out a small photograph. A boy, perhaps ten years old. Dark hair, serious eyes.
“He’s mine,” she said. “Émile never knew. It wasn’t his.”
Morel stared at the photo. His throat tightened.
“You’re saying—?”
“His name is Julien, too. Like the codebreaker.”
The name hit Morel like a missed step on ice. He did the math. The boy’s age. Sophie’s disappearance. The look in her eyes when she handed him the ledger.
“You didn’t just run,” he said softly. “You were hiding him.”
She nodded. “And now they know he exists.”
Behind them, a distant echo — footsteps on stone. Louder this time.
Morel grabbed her hand. “We don’t stop now.”
They burst into the open moments later — an iron gate pushed aside, the wide moonlit river stretching before them. A small boat was tied to a half-submerged dock.
Sophie stared at it. “I left it here two nights ago. Just in case.”
Morel untied the rope. As they pushed away from the shore, headlights flashed briefly on the cliff above. Then a shot cracked through the night.
The bullet hit the water a meter from the hull.
Morel rowed harder. Sophie crouched low, clutching the file and the photo.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
He looked toward the Paris skyline rising in the east.
“To someone who still owes me a favor… and who knows how to disappear a boy.”