The winter of 1939 wrapped Kassel in a bitter frost. Icicles clung to gutters like jagged teeth, and every morning the recruits' breath plumed in clouds as they hurried across the compound yard. Inside, the world of training consumed them—weeks blurred together under the relentless discipline of the Abwehr.
For Christian, life had narrowed into a regimen that stripped away his old identity and rebuilt him as something sharper, harder. Each day began at dawn with the shrill blast of a whistle. Sleep was brief, meals brief, even conversations brief; the hours belonged not to them but to the shadows they were destined to serve.
At six each morning, they assembled in the courtyard. The instructors barked orders as the recruits dropped into push-ups on frozen stone, sweat and frost mingling on their brows. They ran miles through the snow with weighted packs, lungs searing, boots crunching against the icy ground. Christian's muscles ached constantly. His hands, once used to holding pens and sketching maps, grew calloused from striking sandbags, wooden dummies, and eventually each other. They sparred in pairs, learning strikes aimed not for sport but survival; an elbow to the throat, a knee to the ribs, a knife to the gut.
"Self-defense," Sergeant Krüger declared during one session, "isn't about honor. It's about ending the threat before the threat ends you." Christian learned to use his environment as weapon: how to disarm a man with nothing more than a belt, how to choke someone with a length of wire, how to disappear into a crowd seconds after the act. Bruises spread across his ribs, his forearms, and his jaw. Each was a lesson carved in purple and yellow.
After grueling mornings, afternoons were devoted to intellect. In windowless classrooms smelling of ink and chalk, they bent over cipher sheets. An older officer with spectacles, Lieutenant Vogel, introduced them to the Play fair cipher, then to more complex machines like the Enigma, its clacking keys and turning rotors mesmerizing.
They drilled relentlessly: encoding, decoding, memorizing substitution tables until the patterns appeared in their dreams. "You must think faster than the enemy intercepts," Vogel said. "If a message takes you longer than two minutes to decipher, you are already dead."
Christian grew adept at memorization. He learned to hide codes inside innocuous letters: invisible ink written between the lines, a subtle flourish in handwriting that changed an entire meaning. They practiced dead drops; hollowed-out books, loose bricks in walls, tree hollows marked with chalk. "Your mind is your weapon," Vogel reminded them. "And like any weapon, it must be sharpened until it cuts without hesitation."
The most brutal lessons came at night. Without warning, soldiers would storm into the barracks, blindfolding the recruits and dragging them into a dim cell deep underground. There, they faced simulated interrogations. Harsh lamps burned their eyes, water was splashed in their faces, fists slammed on tables. Questions came rapid-fire: names, missions, locations.
Christian quickly learned the rule: never give up information, but never fall into silence so deep that suspicion turned fatal. The trick was misdirection; feeding fragments of truth laced with lies, buying time, appearing broken while protecting the core secret.
They practiced under duress. Sometimes the instructors deprived them of sleep for days; sometimes they bound their wrists and left them shivering in cold rooms. One night, after hours of questioning, an instructor pressed Christian's head against the table and whispered in his ear: "Everyone breaks. The art is breaking in such a way that you reveal nothing of value. Remember that, Wolfe."
By late February, the training reached its darkest point. One gray morning, Müller himself entered the classroom. His presence silenced even the rowdiest recruits. He set a small wooden box on the desk.
Inside lay a neat row of cyanide capsules, each sealed in wax.
"This," Müller said coldly, "is the final guarantee of your loyalty. Should capture become inevitable, should interrogation risk the exposure of your comrades, you will use this."
A murmur spread through the recruits. Christian stared at the tiny glass ampoule so small it could be hidden in a tooth, yet powerful enough to end a life in seconds. "You will carry it always," Müller continued. "Most are concealed in false teeth or inside the lining of your clothing. When bitten, the glass breaks. Death is near-instant, though not painless. Better to die in agony for thirty seconds than to betray hundreds."
He held one between his fingers. "Never let it fall into a child's hand. Never boast of it. And never, ever hesitate if the time comes. Hesitation means capture, and capture means betrayal." The recruits passed the capsules down the row. Christian felt its fragile weight in his palm, his stomach tightening. He imagined his mother's face, Kristina's handwriting, Katia's laughter.
Could he really choose death over them? Yet the oath echoed in his ears: I renounce my home until the war is finished. That night, sleep evaded him. He lay awake, the capsule hidden in the seam of his jacket, its presence more haunting than a blade at his throat.
The weeks of training blurred into routine: physical exhaustion in the morning, mental exhaustion by afternoon, psychological torment by night. And yet, beneath the suffering, Christian felt himself changing. The boy who had once hesitated at his father's stern commands was gone. In his place was a man who could kill with his hands, who could recall cipher keys without paper, who could smile under interrogation and feed only shadows.
But with each new skill came a new fear; that in becoming a weapon, he might lose the part of himself Kristina had begged him to protect. As February waned, Müller gathered the recruits once more. "Your training is not finished, but it is sufficient. Soon, the Reich will send you east. Poland awaits." The room fell silent. "Some of you will be taken to Berlin to continue your training." Herr Müller pulled a sheet from his pocket and began mentioning names. "Weiss, Jansen, Christian…"
Christian's pulse thundered. After hearing his name, he could hardly hear the other names. Berlin? He looked at the other recruits whose names had not been mentioned, they looked downtrodden and sad. Christian was happy for them but felt afraid and sad for himself and for the others who had been chosen.
The shadows he had been molded into would soon step into the light of war.