The game was up. But Mackenzee Pierce didn't panic. She had another weapon. Slowly, deliberately, she reached for the top button of her maid's dress. Then the next. "You want to see what I'm hiding, General?" she asked, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper.
She slipped away, climbing the servant's staircase to the second floor. Von Hammer’s study door was locked, but a hairpin from her impossibly coiffed blonde hair and a soft click later, she was inside. There, on the mahogany desk, was the leather folio. She photographed each page with a miniature camera hidden in a powder compact.
The chateau stood silent under a slate-gray sky, a relic of occupied France in 1944. But within its cold, marble halls, a different kind of resistance was brewing. The Inglourious French Maids, a shadow unit of the underground, had only one rule: the enemy would never see the dusting rag coming. The game was up
"Don't mind me, boys," she said, the English accent now deliberately crisp. "Just a maid doing her… spring cleaning."
Pop. The second button.
" Auf Wiedersehen , General," she whispered.
" Fräulein ," a voice like gravel and ice said. "You are lost." Slowly, deliberately, she reached for the top button
That was all the time she needed.
A floorboard creaked behind her.
The ballroom was a sea of wolf-gray uniforms and champagne flutes. Mackenzee navigated the edge of the crowd, carrying a silver tray of hors d'oeuvres. Every saluting officer's gaze dipped from her face to her décolletage, a predictable trajectory she exploited ruthlessly. "More champagne, mein Herr ?" she’d purr, leaning just so, allowing the fabric to gape. The generals became drooling idiots. One colonel nearly walked into a burning fireplace.