Novel Full Chapter 692: Swan Song
Chapter 692: Swan Song
Paris had known fear before.
It had trembled beneath Prussian cannon in 1870, it had wept under German boots in 1916, and it had starved behind barricades more than once in the civil war that followed.
But this…
This was different.
There were no sirens. No speeches. No grand parades of resistance.
Only the shuffle of feet, millions of them, marching east, west, anywhere but here.
The roads out of Paris were jammed with humanity.
Carts, bicycles, baby strollers, wheelbarrows, all overflowing with hastily packed belongings.
Mothers wept silently as they clutched their children.
Fathers stared ahead, glassy-eyed, trying not to let their panic show.
The rich fled in cars, the poor on foot, and the broken dragged themselves forward like ghosts.
Above them, the sky was clear. Too clear.
That was the part that frightened people most.
There were no air raids. No bombardment. No distant thunder of war.
Only the haunting echo of Bruno von Zehntner’s ultimatum playing on smuggled radios and pirated broadcast towers the military hadn’t yet shut down:
“You have seventy-two hours to flee…”
“Do not die with your tyrant…”
“This is your final hour…”
In the Rue de Vaugirard, where once the cafés buzzed with politics and poetry, two young conscripts sat on overturned crates outside a shuttered bakery.
One of them, barely twenty, still wore his garrison cap like it meant something.
The other had tossed his into the gutter.
They smoked in silence, watching the exodus.
“Still think De Gaulle has a plan?” the first one muttered.
The other shrugged.
“If he does, it better be more than words. Because I haven’t seen a single Spitfire, not a single damn tank, since Lyon fell.”
The first soldier spat. “They say the German’s are bluffing. They say no one would dare do it.”
“And what if he isn’t?”
A pause. Then, softer: “You saw what they did to Belgrade. To Osaka, to Monrovia?”
Neither spoke for a long while.
Then, from across the street, a militia sergeant barked at a group of volunteers who had begun to argue.
“You cowards talking about desertion? You want to run like the rest of the herd?”
One of the older volunteers, a carpenter from the suburbs, stood his ground.
“If it means living, yes. I’ve got two daughters. They’re already gone. Why the hell am I still here?”
“Because if we all run, there’s no France left!”
Another voice chimed in bitterly. “And if we stay all that will remain is salt upon the ashes….”
—
In the heart of Montparnasse, a lieutenant colonel of the regular army stood in front of his mapboard inside a makeshift command post.
He looked over the city’s defenses, still intact, still technically functional.
His staff officers whispered, their expressions grim.
He heard the rumors like everyone else.
Half the units in the outer arrondissements had already abandoned post.
Some were seen heading south toward Vichy.
Others just disappeared, uniforms stripped, rifles thrown into the Seine.
Worse still, supply had stopped.
No fuel. No shells. No food.
Only orders from De Gaulle:
Hold Paris. At all costs.
And beneath it, a secondary line:
Jam all foreign broadcasts.
Too late. The people had heard it already. They were already gone.
By nightfall, the once-proud streets were hollow.
Fires smoldered where shops had been looted.
Posters of De Gaulle had been torn down, burned, or covered in graffiti: “Bourreau de la France!” — Butcher of France.
In the silence, the few who remained gathered in apartments and alleyways, debating whether to follow the exodus… or to dig in.
Some spoke of honor.
Some of duty.
But most… of survival.
A priest rang the bells of Saint-Sulpice one final time, not to call the faithful, but to warn them.
“Three days, the German said. Three days before Paris becomes myth.”
—
In the depths of the École Militaire, behind concrete blast doors and sandbagged corridors, Charles de Gaulle gripped the edge of the situation table until his knuckles whitened.
The room was dim, its lights flickering intermittently from the power rationing.
Outside, the air hung heavy with the scent of damp concrete and dust.
The generator hummed like a distant funeral dirge, and the radios had gone quiet.
Too quiet.
He had summoned every available staff officer to the war room.
Only nine had shown up.
Nine.
Where were the rest?
General Fournier, usually the first to arrive, had “taken ill.” General Bellec’s car had “broken down.” General Duclerc… no one knew.
Gone. All of them. Like rats fleeing a sinking ship.
And those who had come, those still present, they no longer met his eyes.
They no longer saluted like soldiers.
They stared like strangers, watching a man slowly drown beneath the weight of his own delusion.
“We hold Paris,” De Gaulle said firmly, but his voice wavered on the last syllable.
No one answered.
An aide-de-camp approached with a dispatch slip. He looked pale. Too pale.
“They’ve abandoned Saint-Denis, sir,” the aide said quietly. “The 12th Motorized. They didn’t report. Just left.”
“Desertion,” De Gaulle hissed. “Cowards.”
Another voice: “They took their fuel trucks with them, too.”
That made the silence colder.
Then came a whisper from behind.
A soft conversation not meant for him, but De Gaulle’s ears were honed like razors now.
“…They say there’s a bounty.”
“A million marks, I heard.”
“No, gold. Not paper. Gold coin.”
“Dead or alive?”
The words struck him like shrapnel.
Bounty?
He straightened slowly, face pale, heart hammering.
“What did you say?” he asked sharply, stepping toward them.
The officers fell silent.
“You said, what did you say about a bounty?”
No answer.
He stared around the room, eyes flitting from face to face. Suddenly they all looked suspicious.
Were they sweating? Standing too close to the exits? One of them had his hand too close to his coat.
“What do you know?” De Gaulle barked, advancing toward Colonel Valette.
Valette took a step back, startled. “I know nothing, sir. It’s just rumors. From the street. Propaganda.”
But the seed had already taken root in De Gaulle’s mind.
“Bruno,” he whispered. “That bastard…”
Of course. The Lion of Tyrol. Reichsmarschall Bruno von Zehntner. The richest man in Europe, perhaps the world.
A bounty? It would cost him nothing. He could buy a city and never notice the gold was gone.
He didn’t even need to ask the Reichstag. He didn’t need permission from Berlin. He was Berlin.
De Gaulle staggered back, breathing heavily.
“They’re coming for me…” he murmured. “They’ll kill me for it. My own men…”
His mind spiraled. Who else knew? Was it announced? How much? Was it only for his head, or his family’s too? Had someone already sold him out?
He couldn’t trust anyone now.
He barked to his aide: “I want new security. Triple the watch rotation. Metal detectors at every corridor. Every corridor!”
“But sir…”
“Shut up! No one enters this bunker without full clearance! No one!”
His men exchanged glances again, this time not even hiding it.
And he saw it. The look.
The look of quiet resignation.
They were already weighing it. Him.
And the clock…
Tick.
Tock.
Tick.
He looked to the wall. Seventy-one hours remained.
Seventy-one hours before Paris ceased to exist.
Before he ceased to exist.