The lamp on Bruno's desk cast a faint amber glow, barely reaching the edges of the vast study.
Beyond the tall windows, Innsbruck slept beneath a sheet of fog, unaware that across the Atlantic a nation was discovering its terminal diagnosis.
Bruno leaned back in his leather chair, one hand wrapped around a glass of Kentucky bourbon, Roosevelt's own preferred poison, acquired decades ago for the sake of poetic irony.
The ice clinked softly as he swirled it, listening to the Oval Office through a channel no American intelligence officer had ever located.
He had visited that room many times in the past, and now Roosevelt occupied its seat of power.
Some of his wires had been found, but that hardly mattered. He had left so many ways in that they could tear the walls apart stone by stone and still never reach the roots.
Tonight, the line carried only Roosevelt's ragged breathing.
Then came the papers. The shifting. The disbelief.
And finally, silence, thick and heavy.
