Re: Blood and Iron

The lamps burned low in the Reich Chancellery's intelligence wing, their glow pooling over stacks of dossiers, maps, and coded reports.

Outside, Berlin's streets bustled with spring life, but here the air was heavy, silent, broken only by the shuffle of paper and the clipped tones of officers.

Bruno sat at the head of the table, his uniform immaculate, his pale eyes cold as glass.

Spread before him were photographs: French officers, generals, staff men.

The architects of "training exercises" that had spilled German blood along the border.

"They are deliberate provocations," one colonel said, tapping the file. "The orders come signed and sealed. No shell 'goes astray' this many times."

Bruno nodded once. "Then the men who sign them must be taught what stray shells feel like."

A nervous laugh rippled, quickly dying in the silence that followed. Bruno did not smile.

He turned a page, studying a portrait of a broad-shouldered general in Paris. His finger tapped the edge of the photo.

"Heart failure. Sudden. Natural. His arteries are brittle enough already. A carefully measured compound in his wine will do the rest."

Another officer, younger, shifted in his seat. "And the colonel at Reims? He travels constantly. Difficult to catch."

Bruno's gaze lifted, sharp as a blade.

"Cars crash, Lieutenant. Tires burst. Drivers fall asleep. He will die on the road, as so many careless men do."

He leaned back, folding his hands together.

"This is not a war for glory. It is not banners or drums. It is a quiet war, the kind fought with powders, engines, and shadows. We will not leave them martyrs to rally around. They will die in accidents. Fevers. Missteps. Their families will mourn, but their men will not rise. The Republic will rot from the head downward."

A dossier slid across the table: a staff major, one of the loudest voices calling for "training" on the frontier. Bruno skimmed the file, his jaw tightening.

"Ricin. Tasteless, traceless. He will cough, sweat, and perish within days. They will call it fever, and none will question."

The officers scribbled notes, their pens scratching like insects.

Bruno watched them, his voice calm, almost weary.

"I will not be provoked into a war on their terms. Not through their generals, not through their parliaments. They wish to bleed us slowly until we strike in rage. Very well. Then let them bleed instead, one by one, in silence, until there is no hand left to sign the orders."

He closed the folder with finality; the sound echoed in the chamber.

"Begin at once. And remember: nobody is to know of what we have spoken of here."

The men rose, saluting.

The room emptied, leaving Bruno alone with the flickering lamp and the fading photographs of men already marked for death.

He poured himself a glass of water, not wine, and stared at the reflection on the surface.

Accidents, fevers, crashes, the tools of an empire's patience.

And when the last French general collapsed into his grave, Berlin would still be silent.

But Paris would feel the weight of ghosts.

---

The rain fell hard on the narrow road as Colonel Marchand's motorcar sped through the countryside.

His driver cursed at the mud, the wheels slipping as the headlights cut through sheets of water.

Then, a sharp report, like a tire bursting. The car lurched, skidded sideways, and plowed into a stone wall with a thunderous crack.

By the time peasants rushed from their cottages with lanterns, the colonel's skull was already split against the dashboard.

They muttered about bad luck, about dangerous weather.

Nobody thought to ask why a tire so new had burst so violently.

---

General Dupont lifted his wineglass at a dinner party, his cheeks flushed from the praise of younger officers.

He laughed loudly, raised his glass, drank deep, then faltered.

His hand trembled, causing the glass to shatter on the floor.

Guests rushed to him as he clutched his chest, face purple, gasping like a fish on land.

A doctor was summoned, but it was too late.

They said later that he had always eaten too well, smoked too much.

A bad heart. Nothing more.

Nobody remembered the quiet servant who had poured his wine, and then vanished into the night.

---

Staff Major Rousseau had complained of a cough for weeks.

Now he burned with fever, sweating through the sheets, eyes glassy, body wracked with spasms.

Doctors gathered, shaking their heads. "Influenza," they said. "Perhaps pneumonia."

His family wept as his breathing grew ragged, then ceased.

The official report blamed illness.

No one traced the origin of the tasteless powder stirred into his morning coffee days before.

---

The reports arrived in neat, coded cables.

Bruno read them alone in his office, the rain drumming steadily against the windows.

Three men gone, and with them, three voices of provocation silenced forever.

He set the papers down, eyes cold, and reached for the next file, its cover stamped with a single word:

Counter-Intelligence

Bruno drew it closer, the leather of his gloves creaking as he undid the clasp.

Inside were photographs, grainy and harsh under the lamplight: men dragged from rivers, faces pale and bloated; twisted wreckage on a mountain road; a fire-blackened tenement reduced to cinders.

Reports clipped to each one detailed their crimes, infiltration attempts, bribery schemes, coded messages passed through taverns and embassies.

All snuffed out, not by open execution, but by "misfortune."

One report described a French courier whose body had been found in the Alps, said to have fallen during a climb.

Another detailed a supposed "gas leak" in a Berlin boardinghouse, which had consumed three foreign operatives in a midnight blaze.

Each death written off as chance, each spy erased as if the world itself had turned against them.

Bruno leaned back, poured himself a measure of wine, and sipped slowly.

The rich red caught the lamplight as he studied the photographs.

His pale eyes lingered, cold and amused, before he finally spoke aloud, to the shadows, to the silence, perhaps to God Himself.

"If De Gaulle thought I would sit quietly and turn the other cheek, then he is a fool. I have made my stance clear repeatedly. But these idiots keep thinking they can step on a lion's tail and he won't tear them to shreds for the act."

A smirk tugged faintly at the corner of his lips.

He closed the folder, set it atop the stack, and tapped it once with the flat of his hand.

The lion had been patient. The lion had endured.

But those who mistook patience for weakness would learn what it meant to bleed beneath his claws.