Novel Full Chapter 608: The Ceasefire that Nearly Wasn’t
Chapter 608: The Ceasefire that Nearly Wasn’t
The Philippine archipelago held its breath as the American delegation arrived under heavy guard, the Stars and Stripes fluttering beside the blue and red of the Civic Front.
For the first time in years, there was something close to hope, something resembling peace.
Inside the fortified hall in Manila, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, tired, thinner than his portraits, but still sharp-eyed, met with the leaders of the Civic Front.
Around them, aides and translators whispered, typed, and recorded.
“We will agree to a ceasefire,” said Secretary Jaime Bautista, head of the Civic Front. “But only if the transition plan guarantees a full vote on constitutional independence within twelve months.”
Roosevelt’s jaw tightened. “We’ll guarantee the vote. But we’ll also reserve the right to keep a small advisory force on Luzon, strictly non-combat. We’re not walking out blind.”
Tense silence followed.
Then, unexpectedly, Roosevelt leaned forward. “Look, my people are tired of war. But they won’t accept humiliation. This has to look like a compromise. Not a surrender. You want a sovereign Philippines? Fine. Help me make it happen without giving my opponents back home a reason to burn me at the stake.”
They were almost there. A signature away from peace.
Until….
Gunfire.
Chaos exploded at the rear entrance. Screams echoed through the compound.
Roosevelt was rising, then stumbled. His leg braces buckled, not by choice, but from the shock of instinct.
He collapsed in a heap of tangled limbs just as the bullet carved through the air where his heart had been.
The bullet tore through the chair where he’d been seated a second before.
The Secret Service tackled him, dragging him behind the podium as more shots rang out.
Security forces poured in, and the Civic Front’s own paramilitary wing responded instantly, weapons drawn.
“Sniper, north gallery!”
“The Katipunan,” someone screamed. “It’s the Dugo at Laya!”
Red banners marked with bloodied suns appeared in the upper windows as masked radicals opened fire.
But this wasn’t a massacre; it was a failed assassination.
The chaos didn’t last long. Order was restored in minutes.
And Roosevelt lived.
By a miracle.
General MacNeill, posted just behind the curtain, whispered, “Jesus Christ… that would’ve ended everything.” Another aide muttered, “Or started something worse.”
His words hung tightly, like the sword of Damocles. And yet nothing more unfolded that day.
Later that night, as the smoke cleared and a nervous calm settled across the battered capital, Civic Front leader Bautista stood beside the American president, blood on his sleeve and sweat on his brow.
“They tried to stop this moment,” he said. “But now the whole world sees what we’re fighting against.”
Roosevelt, still shaking, nodded. “Then let’s show them we stand together.”
The next day, the ceasefire was signed.
And the hunt for the Katipunan began.
—
The snow fell in thick, lazy drifts outside the Tyrolean manor.
Inside, the only light in the office came from the flickering glow of the black-and-white television, its antenna twisted slightly to the left to hold signal.
The broadcast was already halfway through.
Grainy footage, shaky with the shock of violence, replayed the moment President Roosevelt fell just as the bullet passed through the air he’d occupied a heartbeat before.
Silence.
Then applause. Shouting. The Civic Front’s paramilitaries escorting the president away under gunfire.
The American flag, torn and blood-spattered, still clung to its pole.
Bruno leaned back in his leather chair, beer bottle gripped loosely in one hand, the other resting over his stomach.
He watched it all without a word, the only sound in the room the quiet hum of the heater and the occasional hiss of static from the TV.
The camera cut to a later segment. Roosevelt alive. Roosevelt smiling. Roosevelt shaking hands with the same Civic Front whose radicals had once bled him dry in the jungles of Luzon.
Bruno exhaled through his nose. Long and low.
Then he laughed.
Just once.
A dry, bitter sound.
“Ahh… the Sisters of Fate,” he muttered in German. “What filthy little teases you are.”
He took a long pull from his beer, letting the bottle rest again on his chest as he stared at the frozen screen, Roosevelt, alive, waving. A defiant middle finger from destiny itself.
“I thought you’d bent at last. After all these years… after all the deaths. After all the times the hand ended in my favor. I thought you’d finally relented. But no.”
He sat forward, eyes gleaming, jaw tight.
“You just wanted to remind me that you still have a loaded hand of your own.”
Then, slowly, Bruno smiled, not in joy, but in the grim delight of a man who has nothing left but war.
“It’s not over,” he said quietly, “until I say it is.”
He stood, walking over to the frosted window, staring into the pale white dark of the coming winter.
“You’ve made your move, Fate. Soon… I’ll make mine.”
His fingers tapped against the windowpane like a conductor’s baton. Soft. Measured.
“Let us wager it all, on this one final war.”
A pause.
“Because I have neither the time… nor the strength… to keep playing this game after the last round is fought.”
Bruno looked at the dark liquid and swirled it in his bottle. All while letting his thoughts escape his mind.
“I buried the old world with my own hands. Folded Wilson before he ever got to ante up, snuffed out his sermons before they caught flame. No peace without order, no idealism without consequence. He never saw the table, never got to play.”
“Instead, Hughes drew the high card. A man of law, of logic. Thought he could out-reason me. We played slow hands, philosophy, letters, silence across telephone lines. Hell we even wagered in person. Yet in the end… he lost. He didn’t even try to warn the next player. Instead he just pushed in his chips and walked away. Not in defeat, no, in understanding. That I’d always find a new angle. That silence was safer than defiance. He didn’t fold. He passed.”
Bruno’s eyes remained on the screen, Roosevelt, laughing, surviving. History refusing to close the Chapter.
“Harding? He bet blind. Hoover? Never even knew the stakes. And Churchill…” Bruno exhaled a humorless breath through his nose. “I didn’t deal him the dead man’s hand…”
He lifted his bottle in mock salute.
“But I damn well stacked the deck until the aces and eights fell just right.”
He lifted his beer, the gesture like a toast to a bloodstained card table.
“Kings. Presidents. Revolutionaries. All pawns with delusions of grandeur. All think they’re the player when they’re just the piece.”
The smile faded. The eyes hardened.
“But you, Roosevelt…” He leaned forward, voice low and lethal.
“I thought I had finally read the dealer’s tell. Thought I forced Fortuna’s hand. Thought this was the round I bankrupted Fate herself. But no…” He set the bottle down.
“She had one more draw hidden in the deck.”
A long silence. The hum of static. The snows fall becoming more violent and erratic outside.
Then Bruno stood.
“Very well. You’ve called my bluff, Fate.”
He stepped toward the window; the frost haloing his silhouette.
“Now it’s my turn to raise.”
A slow, bitter grin formed on his face.
“Let’s wager everything on one final round.””Because I’ve seen the cards, and I’m all in.””The chips are down, and I’ve nothing left to lose but this world itself.”
He tapped the frosted glass gently, three slow, deliberate knocks. A gambler’s cue.
“Deal, Fortuna. Let’s see who in the end tipped the odds and rigged the game….”