The plan was working with the flawless, horrifying precision of a well-oiled machine. Koba's prophecies had become reality, forged in fire and steel. They moved through a landscape of total Russian collapse, a tide of gray-green German uniforms sweeping over a broken army. The air hummed with the joyful shouts of the victors and the low, stunned moans of the defeated.
They found the Russian artillery command bunker exactly where Koba had said it would be, nestled in a small, blasted copse of birch trees two kilometers behind the former front line. It was deserted, the officers having fled in the final moments of the bombardment. Inside, scattered amongst overturned furniture and discarded papers, lay the proof. A German sergeant, his face smeared with grime and awe, held up the regimental logbook for Koba to see. The final entries, scrawled in a panicked hand, were a litany of desperation: Ammunition status: 6 shells per gun. Firing forbidden without direct authorization from General Dimitriev. God help us.
It was the ultimate vindication. Koba's impossible knowledge was no longer a matter of suspicion; it was a confirmed, strategic miracle. The German soldiers, who had started the day viewing him as a strange Russian mascot, now looked at him with the reverent fear they might afford a warlock. They were his now, their loyalty transferred from their dead lieutenant to the man who could see the future.
Their objective, the prisoner-of-war camp designated Oflag 17, lay another five kilometers ahead. According to the timetable ticking in Koba's head, they were making excellent time. Ipatieff, the key to a new kind of power, was almost within his grasp.
They pushed on, leaving the main German advance to mop up the pockets of remaining resistance. Their small, specialized unit moved quickly through the shattered remnants of the Russian rear. They passed columns of shell-shocked Russian prisoners being herded west, their faces blank, their movements shuffling and automatic. They were the statistics from Jake's history books, made flesh and blood, but Koba felt a cold, professional detachment. They were a sign of his success.
It was as they were cutting through a patch of woods that had been largely spared the worst of the shelling that the unforeseen variable appeared. It wasn't a hidden machine gun nest or a sudden counter-attack. It was a sound. A sound that had not been recorded in any historical after-action report or academic journal. It was the sound of human suffering, thin and desperate, crying out in Russian.
Pavel, at the head of the column, held up a fist, and the squad froze. They listened. The cries were a mixture of pleas for water, for mothers, for an end to pain. Koba felt a prickle of irritation. A delay. Unplanned. Unacceptable.
They moved forward cautiously, rifles ready. They rounded a thicket of dense undergrowth and the source of the sound was revealed. Huddled in a small clearing, using the ruins of a small, country church as a makeshift shelter, was a Russian field hospital. It was not a formal medical station, but a desperate, ad-hoc collection point for the wounded who had been overrun by the speed of the German advance.
The scene was a tableau from Goya's Disasters of War. Dozens of men lay on bloody straw and filthy blankets spread across the church's stone floor and the muddy ground outside. Some were missing limbs, their stumps crudely wrapped in bloody rags. Others stared at the sky with the vacant, thousand-yard stare of men whose minds had been broken beyond repair. A single, elderly doctor, his uniform stained and his face etched with exhaustion, moved among them, aided by two terrified-looking young orderlies. They had almost no supplies. They were not treating the men; they were merely presiding over their deaths.
The new German sergeant, a hardened veteran named Klaus, spat on the ground. "Verwundete," he grunted. Wounded. He looked at Koba, his expression impatient. "Leave them. They are not our problem. Our objective is the camp. We are losing time."
He was right. Koba's internal clock was screaming. Every minute they wasted here was a minute the chaos of the retreat could swallow the camp. Ipatieff could be moved, could be lost in the tide of prisoners, could be killed by a stray shell. The mission—the acquisition of a priceless asset that would solidify his position and give him the tools to build his new kingdom—was paramount. The cold, calculating mind of Koba assessed the situation: these men were already dead or dying. They were a non-strategic asset. A distraction. The logical, necessary decision was to move on.
But for the first time since the bombardment began, the Jake inside him began to scream. The detached historian, the cold strategist, was suddenly gone, replaced by the empathetic, 21st-century man who saw not statistics, not a logistical problem, but a pit of raw, unbearable human agony. He saw a boy, no older than sixteen, his chest a bloody mess, gasping for air and whispering the word "Mama."
Koba hesitated. Just for a second. A fatal, frozen moment where the two minds inside him went to war. The cold pragmatism of the survivor versus the searing, horrified empathy of the man he used to be.
The decision was made for him.
Pavel, who had been standing silently, his face a mask of grief, slowly unslung his rifle and leaned it against a tree. He looked at the carnage, his gaze settling on the gasping boy. Koba saw something in his loyal subordinate's eyes break. The silent, mournful disapproval he had carried for months, the heartbroken loyalty of a man watching his hero become a monster, finally hardened into a single, simple, unbreakable act of defiance.
He unbuckled the large medical kit from his pack—the one Koba had insisted they all carry, another piece of 21st-century foresight for treating their own men. He walked past Koba, knelt beside the dying boy, and opened the kit. He pulled out a clean bandage and a precious vial of morphine.
The German sergeant stepped forward, his hand on his pistol. "Was tust du? What are you doing? We are leaving!"
Pavel ignored him. He looked up, not at the German, but directly at Koba. His voice was quiet, but it cut through the clearing with the force of a judgment. It was the first time since the firefight on the bridge that he had openly, directly challenged a tactical command in front of others.
"Koba," he said, the name an accusation. "We are not animals."
He gestured with his chin towards the field of dying men. "We cannot just leave them to die in a ditch. This was not the cause. This was not the revolution we talked about in the safe houses in Tbilisi."
The simple words struck Koba with the force of a physical blow. The world contracted to this single, impossible moment. In front of him lay the mission, the prize, the cold, logical path to power and survival represented by the impatient German sergeant. Behind him, kneeling in the mud and tending to an enemy soldier, was Pavel—his first disciple, his conscience, his last living link to the man he had been, making a final, desperate stand not against the Germans or the Tsar, but against him.
The other members of their Russian team looked from Pavel to Koba, their faces a mixture of confusion and conflict. The Germans watched them all, their suspicion, which had been burned away by the morning's miracles, now rekindling in their eyes. The delicate alliance was fraying.
The cries of the wounded filled the sudden, tense silence. Every second that ticked by was a second Ipatieff could be lost forever. Every second that ticked by, the mutiny of his own soul, embodied by Pavel, grew stronger. Koba was trapped between the brutal, necessary demands of the monster he had become and the last, flickering embers of the man he once was.