The English Channel was trying to kill me.
The smuggler's boat pitched like a toy in a bathtub. I was on my hands and knees, retching bile into the dark, swirling water.
"Hold on!" Jack screamed over the wind.
A wave smashed into the hull. The wood groaned. I slid across the wet planks, slamming my shoulder against a barrel.
Pain exploded in my chest. Not from the impact. From the heart.
Thump-thump-pause. Thump-thump-pause.
My arrhythmia was conducting a symphony of panic.
"Sir!" Cléry crawled towards me. He looked like a drowned rat. "Breathe!"
"I am..." I gasped. "Trying."
I closed my eyes. I saw the guillotine. I saw my son's cold eyes. I saw the burning bakeries.
If I died here, puking in the dark, it was all for nothing. The accounting would be incomplete. The ledger would never balance.
Spite, I told myself. Use the spite.
I forced air into my lungs. I grabbed the gunwale. I pulled myself up.
Through the mist, a gray shape loomed. Jagged. Immense.
The White Cliffs of Dover.
They looked like the teeth of a skull. Or the walls of a fortress.
"Land!" Jack yelled. "Prepare to beach!"
The boat surged forward on a breaker. Sand ground against the keel with a teeth-rattling crunch.
We were thrown forward. I landed in the surf. The water was colder than France.
I scrambled up the shingle beach, coughing up seawater.
"Don't move!"
A line of red coats emerged from the fog. British muskets leveled at my chest.
"French spies!" a sergeant shouted. "On your knees!"
I fell to the pebbles. I didn't have the strength to stand anyway.
Jack and his crew were already raising their hands. Cléry looked at me, terrified.
A young officer stepped forward. Lieutenant. Arrogant face. Clean uniform.
He looked down at me with pure disgust. I was covered in vomit, seawater, and mud. I looked like a beggar.
"Name?" he barked.
I looked up. I wiped the slime from my mouth.
"Alex Miller," I rasped.
The Lieutenant sneered. "And what are you, Miller? A deserter? A thief?"
I stood up. My legs shook, but I stood.
"Former CEO of France," I said. "Current consultant."
The Lieutenant laughed. "Take them to the stockade. We'll hang the smugglers in the morning."
"Wait."
I reached into my wet coat. The soldiers tensed, fingers on triggers.
I pulled out the pistol Bessières had given me.
"Drop it!" the sergeant screamed.
I didn't point it at them. I reversed it. I held it by the barrel and offered it to the Lieutenant.
"Check the handle," I said.
The Lieutenant hesitated. He snatched the gun. He looked at the base of the grip.
Stamped into the steel was the Royal Seal of Louis XVI.
"Stolen property," he scoffed.
"My property," I corrected. "I demand to speak to William Pitt."
" The Prime Minister?" The Lieutenant looked at me like I was insane. "You'll speak to the hangman."
"If you hang me," I said, my voice cutting through the wind, "you lose the codes to the French semaphore towers. You lose the map of the Italian supply lines. And you lose the only man who knows how to bankrupt Napoleon Bonaparte."
The Lieutenant froze.
He looked at the seal on the gun. He looked at my eyes.
He saw something there. Not fear.
Authority.
"Put him in the carriage," the Lieutenant ordered, his voice changing. "But keep the irons on."
The carriage ride to London was surreal.
I sat in shackles, dripping wet, watching the English countryside roll by.
It was... peaceful.
Green fields. Fat sheep. stone bridges that weren't broken. Chimneys that puffed white smoke, not black.
There were no heads on pikes. No mobs burning toll booths.
It was efficient. It was stable.
It was everything France wasn't.
"You admire it?"
The man opposite me spoke. He wasn't a soldier. He was a government agent in a gray suit. He had been scribbling in a notebook for an hour.
"I admire the solvency," I said. "It's a well-managed asset."
"France is a fire," the agent said. "We're just trying to keep the sparks from landing here."
"I'm not a spark," I said. "I'm the fire extinguisher."
We didn't stop at a prison. We didn't stop at the Tower of London.
The carriage rolled into the city. The noise of London was a dull roar of commerce. Carts, horses, shouting. But it was the noise of business, not riot.
We pulled up to a modest brick building. 10 Downing Street.
Guards rushed us inside. I was taken to a small room. A fire crackled in the grate.
Someone removed my irons. Someone handed me a towel and a cup of tea.
I drank it. It was hot. Sweet.
The door opened.
A man walked in.
He was young—younger than me. Thirty-something. He was thin, with a sharp, aquiline nose and eyes that looked like they were counting the threads in the carpet.
William Pitt the Younger. The Prime Minister. The financial genius of the British Empire.
He didn't bow. He didn't smile.
He walked to the sideboard and poured two glasses of sherry.
"They told me you were dead, Your Majesty," Pitt said. His voice was dry, precise. British.
"Louis XVI is dead," I said. "He was a bad manager. He let the shareholders riot."
Pitt turned. He handed me a glass.
"And who are you?"
"Alex Miller. The Liquidator."
Pitt took a sip. He studied me over the rim of his glass. He didn't see a King. He saw a variable in an equation.
"My spies tell me your son has invaded Italy," Pitt said. "They say he fights like a demon."
"He fights like a math problem," I corrected. "He calculates the cost of life and spends it. But he's over-leveraged."
"How so?"
"He's printing money to pay the interest on his glory. The Assignat is worthless. The economy is a bubble."
I walked to the fire. The warmth seeped into my bones, easing the ache in my chest.
"You have the Navy, Mr. Pitt. You have the blockade. But you're trying to starve France. You can't starve a country that is looting its neighbors."
"And your proposal?"
"Don't starve them," I said. "Bankrupt them."
I pulled the soggy black ledger from my coat. I threw it on the table. It landed with a heavy thud.
"What is this?" Pitt asked.
"The audit," I said. "Names. Accounts. Supply routes. The weak points in the French banking system. The smugglers who will take your gold to flood the market with counterfeit currency."
Pitt put down his glass. He picked up the book. He opened a page.
His eyes widened.
"This is..."
"Treason," I finished. "High treason."
"Why?" Pitt looked at me. "Why destroy your own kingdom?"
"It's not my kingdom anymore," I said. "It's a rogue subsidiary. And the current CEO is going to burn Europe down to hide his losses."
I looked Pitt in the eye.
"I don't want the crown back. I don't want an army. I want a desk."
Pitt was silent for a long moment. The fire popped.
Then, a slow, thin smile spread across his face. It wasn't a warm smile. It was the smile of a shark recognizing another shark.
"A hostile takeover," Pitt murmured.
"Hostile," I agreed. "And aggressive."
Pitt raised his glass.
"To the audit, Mr. Miller."
I clinked my glass against his. The sound rang clear in the quiet room.
"To the audit."
I took a drink. The sherry burned going down, but it felt good.
For the first time in years, the math was on my side.