The keel of the Marie-Louise ground against the shingle of Grand Bé with a jarring crunch.
Elias killed the engine instantly. The silence that followed was heavy, broken only by the panting of Sarah's breath and the rhythmic hiss of the receding tide.
"Out. Now," Elias commanded. He didn't wait for her. He jumped into the knee-deep water, the cold stinging his skin like a thousand needles, and hauled the skiff further up the narrow strip of beach.
Grand Bé was a desolate, treeless hump of granite that sat a few hundred yards off the ramparts of Saint-Malo. At high tide, it was an island. At low tide, a paved causeway emerged from the sea, connecting it to the mainland. Right now, the causeway was still a foot underwater, a shimmering line of drowned stone.
Sarah climbed out, shivering violently. Her high-end hiking jacket was soaked, and her face had gone from pale to a ghostly translucent blue.
"We're trapped here," she whispered, looking back at the black RHIB. The interceptor was idling a mile out, a silent predator watching the only exit.
"Not trapped. Waiting," Elias said. He led her up the steep, winding path that climbed toward the summit of the island.
At the highest point sat the tomb of René de Chateaubriand. It was a simple stone slab, topped with a granite cross, facing the sea.
There were no names, no dates. The poet had wanted to be buried where he could hear the Atlantic forever. Elias respected that. In his line of work, a nameless grave was often the best one could hope for.
"Why here?" Sarah asked, hugging her arms to her chest.
"The island has a line of sight to the municipal library's rooftop antenna," Elias said, pointing toward the city's ramparts. "And more importantly, there's an old German observation post hidden under the northern ridge. It's out of the wind, and it's been a dead drop for the 'Librarians' since the fifties."
He moved toward a cluster of boulders near the cliff edge. To a tourist, it looked like a natural rock fall. To Elias, the way the lichen grew over a specific crack suggested it had been disturbed recently. He wedged his fingers into the gap and pulled. A heavy slab of reinforced concrete, disguised with stone veneer, swung outward on a counterweight system.
Inside was a cramped, dry bunker. It smelled of old copper and ozone.
"Get inside," Elias said.
The bunker was small, barely six feet square. In the center sat a weathered metal desk bolted to the floor. On top of it was a ruggedized, military-grade laptop, its casing thick with dust. It was connected to a series of deep-cycle batteries and a small satellite uplink.
"My father didn't hate computers," Elias mused, looking at the setup. "He just didn't trust the ones he didn't own."
He wiped the screen with his sleeve and flipped the power switch. A low hum filled the room as the batteries kicked in. The screen flickered to life, glowing with an amber-tinted BIOS.
"The USB drive," Sarah prompted, her voice tight with anticipation.
Elias pulled the drive from the PVC tube. His hands were steady, but his mind was racing.
For years, he had imagined his father as a man of simple hardware and quiet regrets. Seeing this—the clandestine infrastructure, the cold efficiency of the setup—felt like meeting a stranger.
He plugged the drive into the port.
ENTER AUTHORIZATION KEY, the screen demanded.
Elias pulled the old brass key from his pocket. He turned it over. Stamped into the metal of the bow was a sequence of six digits: 7-4-1-9-2-5. He typed them in.
The drive began to whir. A progress bar crawled across the screen. Decrypting...
"Sarah," Elias said without looking at her. "What exactly did you do for the Librarian? You said you sent the 'Omega' signal. How do you know about the accounts?"
Sarah sat on a wooden crate, her eyes fixed on the amber screen.
"I was a researcher at the Bank of International Settlements in Basel. I was flagged to investigate a series of 'ghost accounts'—funds that had been stationary since 1989 but suddenly began moving billions into private security firms. I followed the trail. It led back to a name I found in an old Stasi file: 'The Librarian.' I sent a message to the only address I could find—a hardware store in Saint-Malo."
"And you didn't think to call the authorities?"
"The people moving the money are the authorities, Elias. Or at least, they're the ones who pay for them."
The laptop beeped. The decryption was complete. A single folder appeared on the desktop. It was titled: L'INDEX DE L'OUBLI—The Index of the Forgotten.
Elias clicked it open.
It wasn't a list of bank accounts. Not exactly. It was a database of names, organized by country. Next to each name was a date, a location, and a single word: Compromised.
Elias scrolled down the list for France. His breath hitched.
Lefebvre, Jean-Pierre. Minister of Defense. (1985, Dresden. Evidence: Video.)
Vannier, Claire. CEO of Areva. (1988, East Berlin. Evidence: Financial Ledger.)
Dupont, Marc. Chief of Intelligence, DGSE. (1987, Prague. Evidence: Transmissions.)
"It's a list of assets," Elias whispered. "These people aren't just powerful. They're former moles. Some were coerced, some were paid. But they all stayed in power after the Wall fell. They climbed the ladder, and now they run the country."
"And Vauquelin?" Sarah asked, leaning in.
Elias scrolled to the bottom of the index. There was a separate file titled VAUQUELIN CORP. He opened it.
The screen displayed a corporate structure. At the top was no name, only a symbol: a stylized 'V' intertwined with an anchor. But beneath it were the names of the shareholders. They were the same names from the "Compromised" list.
"They aren't just being blackmailed," Elias realized. "They created Vauquelin to manage their own secrets. They're using the stolen 'Sleeper' funds to buy up their own incriminating evidence and eliminate anyone who knows the truth. They aren't a company. They're a survival committee."
"And your father had the master list," Sarah said. "The Librarian was the one keeping the balance. As long as he was alive, they couldn't move. They were afraid of him."
"And now that he's gone, they're cleaning the slate," Elias said.
He looked at the satellite uplink.
"I can upload this. I can send it to every major news outlet in Europe. It would be over in ten minutes."
"They'll kill us before the first byte hits the server," Sarah warned. "Look."
She pointed to a small monitor connected to a camera mounted outside the bunker. The black RHIB had reached the causeway. The tide had dropped enough for the road to be passable. Four men in tactical gear were disembarking, carrying suppressed submachine guns. They weren't hiding anymore. They knew exactly where the bunker was.
Elias looked at the progress bar for the upload. Estimated time: 12 minutes.
The satellite link in this old bunker was slow. It was a relic of a different era.
"We don't have twelve minutes," Elias said. He reached into his jacket and pulled out his Sig Sauer. He checked the magazine. Seventeen rounds. Two spare mags.
"Can you finish the upload?" he asked Sarah.
"I... I think so. It's a standard FTP protocol."
"Listen to me," Elias said, his voice dropping into that low, terrifyingly calm register he had used in the basements of Kyiv.
"You stay behind this desk. No matter what you hear outside, you do not open that door. If the bar hits 100%, you pull the drive, smash the laptop, and use the emergency flares in that locker to signal the coast guard. Do you understand?"
"Elias, you can't fight four of them. They're professionals."
Elias looked at the heavy concrete door. "This island is a maze of trenches and granite. They're professionals, but I'm a Thorne. I've been playing hide-and-seek on this rock since I was five."
He stepped out of the bunker and pulled the heavy door shut. The wind hit him like a physical blow. The sun was beginning to set, casting long, bloody shadows across the granite island.
He moved away from the tomb of Chateaubriand, staying low, merging with the grey stone. He could see the men now. They were moving in a standard diamond formation, leapfrogging from cover to cover. They were good. They moved silently, their eyes scanning the ridges.
Elias didn't wait for them to reach the summit.
He moved to a narrow cleft in the rock—a spot where the path narrowed to a single file. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a handful of heavy-duty fishing line and a small, high-explosive canister he'd taken from the 'Special Projects' drawer in the hardware store. It was a simple tripwire, a primitive but effective tool.
He set the trap in ten seconds and melted back into the shadows.
A minute later, the first man reached the cleft. He was the point man, wearing a thermal monocular over his left eye. He was looking for a heat signature, but Elias had spent the last five minutes lying on a patch of ice-cold wet kelp, lowering his body temperature.
The point man tripped the wire.
The explosion wasn't huge—it was a flash-bang modified with metal shavings. A blinding white light erupted in the narrow passage, followed by a roar that echoed off the granite walls. The point man screamed, clutching his eyes.
Elias didn't hesitate. He rose from the shadows ten feet away and fired two rounds. Pop-pop. The point man slumped over.
"Contact! Left flank!" one of the others shouted.
A hail of 9mm rounds chewed into the granite where Elias had been a second before. He was already moving, sliding down a steep embankment into a dry trench.
He counted the shots. They were firing in bursts. They were nervous. They had expected an easy hunt—an old man's son and a frightened researcher. Instead, they had found a ghost.
"Spread out!" a voice commanded in English. "Flush him out!"
Elias smiled grimly. They were making the classic mistake: they were separating on unfamiliar ground.
He waited until he heard the crunch of boots on gravel to his right. He didn't use his gun. He picked up a heavy piece of jagged granite. As the second man rounded the corner of a bunker wall, Elias lunged. He drove the stone into the man's throat and, in the same motion, stripped the submachine gun from his hands.
He didn't use the weapon. He smashed it against the rock, rendering it useless, and vanished again.
Two left.
He could hear them communicating through their headsets, their voices tight with a growing realization. They were being hunted.
Elias checked his watch. Six minutes left.
He looked toward the summit. He could see the faint glow of the amber screen through the ventilation slit of the bunker. Sarah was still there. The data was moving.
But then, he saw something that made his blood run cold.
A fifth man was standing on the roof of the observation post. He wasn't wearing tactical gear. He was wearing a charcoal overcoat. He wasn't carrying a submachine gun; he was holding a small, high-tech remote detonator.
The man in the charcoal coat looked toward the shadows where Elias was hiding. He didn't have a thermal scope. He just had an intuition.
"Elias!" the man called out, his voice smooth and carrying over the wind. "I know you're listening. My name is Vogel. I worked with your father in '89. I respected him. He was a man of principles."
Elias stayed silent, his finger on the trigger of the Sig.
"But principles don't pay for silence anymore," Vogel continued. "I've placed four charges of C4 around the base of this bunker. If you fire that pistol, I press this button. The girl dies, the laptop dies, and the Index becomes a tombstone for both of you."
Elias stepped out from behind a boulder. He held the Sig Sauer aimed at Vogel's chest. The two remaining tactical men moved in, their weapons trained on Elias's head.
"The upload is almost finished, Vogel," Elias said. "You're too late."
"Is it?" Vogel smiled, holding up a small electronic jammer. "I've been blocking the satellite frequency since I stepped onto this rock. Your friend is watching a progress bar that will never reach 100%."
Elias looked at the bunker. He felt a wave of cold fury.
"What do you want?"
"The USB drive," Vogel said. "And your word as a Thorne that you'll walk away. Your father kept the secret to protect the peace. We want to do the same."
"You want to protect a bunch of murderers and traitors," Elias spat.
"In this world, Elias, that's what we call 'stability.'" Vogel held the detonator higher. "The drive. Now. Or we see how well that concrete holds up against plastic explosives."
Elias looked at the Sig in his hand. He looked at the two gunmen. Then, he looked at the sea.
The tide was almost fully out now. The causeway was clear.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out the USB drive. He held it up between two fingers.
"Catch," Elias said.
He didn't throw it to Vogel. He threw it with all his might toward the jagged rocks at the edge of the cliff, where the white foam of the Atlantic was churning in a frenzy.
"No!" Vogel screamed.
For a split second, every eye followed the small black object as it soared through the air.
It was the only opening Elias needed.