The basement of the Bank of England didn't smell like money.
It smelled of copper, oil, and damp stone.
Seventeen iron printing presses roared in the gloom. The rhythmic thump-hiss-clack was deafening. It sounded like a heartbeat. A mechanical, industrial heartbeat.
I walked down the row of machines, checking the output.
A sheet of paper slid out of the nearest press. I picked it up. The ink was still wet, staining my fingertips black.
It was a French Assignat. Denomination: 500 Livres.
It was beautiful.
The engraving of Liberty was crisp. The watermark was perfect. The paper was thick, creamy rag stock—far better than the cheap wood pulp my son was using in Paris.
"It's too good," I shouted over the noise.
William Pitt stood next to me, arms crossed. He looked like a disapproving headmaster.
"Too good?" Pitt yelled back. "It's indistinguishable from the real thing."
"That's the problem!" I tossed the bill back onto the stack. "If it feels better than the real money, people will hoard it. We need it to circulate. We need it to rot the economy from the inside."
I turned to the foreman.
"Lower the paper quality," I ordered. "Mix sawdust into the pulp. Make the ink smear a little. It needs to look like it was printed by a desperate government losing a war."
The foreman blinked. "You want us to do a bad job, sir?"
"I want you to do an authentic job."
Pitt motioned for me to follow him. We stepped into a quiet side office, the roar of the presses muffling behind the heavy door.
"You're enjoying this," Pitt said. He poured two cups of tea from a silver pot.
"I'm not," I said. "I'm auditing."
"You're flooding your own country with counterfeit currency, Mr. Miller. That's economic terrorism."
"It's quantitative easing," I corrected. "Just... unauthorized."
I took the tea. My hands were shaking slightly. Not from the cold. From the adrenaline.
"How much have we printed?" I asked.
"Two billion livres," Pitt said. "Enough to double the French money supply in a week."
"Double it," I nodded. "Good. When supply doubles, value halves. By Tuesday, a loaf of bread in Paris will cost a wheelbarrow of cash."
Pitt looked at me over the rim of his cup. His eyes were cold, calculating.
"You realize this will hurt the poor first," he said. "The rich have gold. The poor have paper. You are bankrupting the peasantry to spite your son."
I felt a sharp pang in my chest. The arrhythmia fluttered.
I remembered Captain Bessières eating the egg. I remembered the hollow eyes of the women in the market.
"I know," I said softly.
"And you're still doing it?"
"If Napoleon conquers Italy, he takes the gold mines," I said. "If he takes the gold, he stabilizes the currency. If he stabilizes the currency, he builds a fleet. If he builds a fleet, he invades England."
I took a sip of tea. It tasted like guilt.
"A year of hunger is better than a century of tyranny. I am cutting off the gangrenous limb to save the patient."
"Or," Pitt said, setting his cup down, "you just want to win."
I didn't answer him.
Because he was right.
I returned to my townhouse in Soho late that night.
It was a modest place. Small. Anonymous. The kind of place a mid-level clerk would live.
I unlocked the door and froze.
The scent of lavender perfume hit me. Heavy. Expensive.
"Hello, brother."
I walked into the parlor.
Sitting in my armchair was the Comte d'Artois. My younger brother. The man who had fled France the moment the first stone was thrown at the Bastille.
He was dressed in a blue silk coat with gold embroidery. He wore a powdered wig. He looked like a peacock stranded in a coal mine.
"Artois," I said, closing the door. "How did you get past the lock?"
"I have friends in the Foreign Office," he sniffed. He stood up, opening his arms for a hug.
I didn't move.
"What do you want?"
Artois dropped his arms. His smile faltered. "Is that how you greet your kin? After all these years?"
"I'm tired, Artois. And I have work to do."
"Work?" Artois laughed. He gestured around the small room. "Living like a rat in London? Printing fake money in a basement? Is this the King of France?"
"The King of France is dead," I said. "I'm a consultant."
Artois's face hardened. He stepped closer.
"We have an army, Louis. Five thousand loyal nobles in Koblenz. They are waiting for a leader. Waiting for you."
"To do what?"
"To march!" Artois shouted. His face turned red. "To storm Paris! To rescue your son from that Corsican upstart! To restore the glory of Versailles!"
I looked at him. Really looked at him.
He was a relic. A ghost of a world that had already burned down. He thought he could fight cannons with swords and speeches.
"My son doesn't want to be rescued," I said quietly. "And Napoleon isn't an upstart. He's a genius."
"He is a commoner!"
"He is winning!" I shouted back. The force of my voice surprised us both.
I took a breath, calming my heart.
"You want to march on Paris with five thousand men in silk stockings? Napoleon has two hundred thousand veterans who eat gunpowder for breakfast. He would slaughter you in an afternoon."
"Better to die a King than live as... this," Artois spat. He gestured at my ink-stained hands.
"No," I said. "It is better to win."
I walked to the door and opened it.
"Go back to your mistresses, Artois. Go back to your balls and your gambling. Leave the war to the professionals."
"You are a coward," Artois hissed as he brushed past me. "You always were. You count coins while heroes die."
He slammed the door behind him.
I stood in the silence of the hallway.
"Coward," I whispered.
Maybe.
But cowards survive. And dead heroes don't balance the books.
"Sir?"
I turned. Cléry was standing at the top of the stairs. He was holding a candle. He looked pale.
"You heard?"
"Yes, sir."
I walked into the kitchen. I needed water. My mouth felt like sand.
"He's right, you know," Cléry said quietly.
I stopped pouring the water. "About what?"
"We are starving them."
Cléry put the candle on the table. He pulled a piece of paper from his pocket. It was one of the fake bills I had brought home.
"My sister lives in Lyon," Cléry said. "She has three children. If this money becomes worthless... how will she feed them?"
I gripped the edge of the table.
This was the audit. The moral audit.
In the palace, the people were abstract numbers. "The Mob." "The Peasantry."
But here, in this kitchen, the people had faces. They had nieces and nephews.
"Cléry," I said. "Do you trust me?"
"I... I want to, sir."
"Napoleon is building a machine," I said. "A machine that turns men into corpses to fuel his ambition. If we don't break the gears now, he will feed your sister's children into that machine in ten years."
I picked up the fake bill. I held it to the candle flame.
It caught fire. The face of Liberty turned black and curled into ash.
"We are burning the field to stop the locusts," I said. "It's ugly. It's cruel. But it's the only way to save the harvest."
Cléry watched the ash float to the floor.
"Will they forgive us?" he asked.
"No," I said. "They won't."
I dropped the charred paper.
"But they'll be alive to hate us."
The docks of London were a chaotic mess of fog and rigging.
I stood on the pier, wrapped in a thick wool coat.
Below me, a fleet of small, fast fishing boats bobbed in the tide. Smugglers. Pirates. The scum of the Channel.
They weren't loading muskets. They weren't loading gunpowder.
They were loading crates marked "Tea."
Inside, there was no tea. There were billions of Livres in counterfeit paper.
"Ready to cast off, Mr. Miller," the dockmaster said.
I looked at the fleet.
This was my army. No uniforms. No flags. Just greed and ink.
"Where are they landing?" I asked.
"Brittany. Normandy. The Vendée. Anywhere with a beach and a black market."
I nodded.
I thought of my son, sitting in the Tuileries, planning his conquest of Italy. He was looking at maps of forts and rivers.
He wasn't looking at the inflation rate.
"Launch them," I ordered.
"Sir?"
"Launch the fleet."
The dockmaster blew his whistle. Ropes were cast off. Sails snapped in the wind.
One by one, the boats slipped into the fog, heading south.
They were carrying a plague. A virus made of paper.
I watched them go until they were swallowed by the gray mist.
"Checkmate, Louis," I whispered.
I turned and walked back into the city.
I wasn't a King anymore. Kings fight for land.
I was the Liquidator. And I was about to foreclose on France.