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.
