Paris stood proud. The city's silence was more deafening than the roar of the Reich's artillery.
Christian had learned to walk with his ears sharper than his eyes, for danger no longer came with uniforms or rifles, it crept in with soft words, hidden notes, and sudden silences when a stranger entered a café.
But in July of 1940, something changed. The resistance no longer seemed scattered. Their strikes grew bolder, coordinated, almost military. Herr Müller's reports spoke of a new figure uniting the underground, a man known only as Sébastien.
The name spread through the Abwehr like fire. No one had seen him. Some called him a former French officer; others swore he had British training. Christian dismissed rumor, but when bodies of German officers began to appear in alleys, throats slit with surgical precision, he knew Sébastien was no ghost and he was determined to bring him down.
Christian set his own snare in Montmartre. A known courier had been followed to a café on Rue Lepic. Christian went in civilian dress, a copy of Le Figaro under his arm, and ordered absinthe. He watched. Waited.
The courier slid into a backroom. Christian followed, hand near his pistol. But when he pushed through the curtain, he found nothing but an empty table and a note.
The hunter thinks himself alone. But the hunted see in the dark.
Christian froze. His instincts screamed. He turned just as the café went black, someone had cut the power. In the suffocating dark, he caught the faint scrape of a shoe and a whisper in French, low and mocking:
"So this is Berlin's shadow?"
A blade flashed. Christian ducked, steel slicing air above his head. He drew his pistol, fired once but the bullet cracked plaster. By the time lamps sputtered back to life, the room was empty. Only the note remained, weighted by a dagger stuck into the wood.
Sébastien had been there. And he had let Christian live.
From that night forward, Christian felt Sébastien's presence everywhere. Messages intercepted too late, couriers vanishing before he could intercept them, sabotage hitting German supply lines with uncanny timing.
Once, he had gone to meet an informant in the gardens of Luxembourg Palace, only to find the man dead already, his throat cut with the same precision as before, with a calling card left pinned to his chest: "Too slow, man from Berlin."
Herr Müller demanded results. "Paris is not Warsaw," he barked over the crackling telephone line. "These French dogs still believe they can win. If this Sébastien is their spine, break it!"
But Christian knew he was facing something different. This was no reckless underground. This was a mind of a strategist and he was methodical and patient.
And worse, Sébastien had begun to study him.
Late one evening, Christian walked the banks of the Seine, trailing another suspected courier. He paused near Pont Neuf, the night air sharp with the smell of rain. A violin played faintly somewhere nearby. It was then he saw him.
A man leaning casually against the stone rail, cigarette glowing in the dark. His coat was French, his hair slightly disheveled, but his eyes, sharp, calculating and fixed on Christian with deliberate calm.
Neither spoke. The courier slipped away unnoticed. For a long moment, they simply stared across the small space between them, the city's silence pressing down like a weight. Then Sébastien smiled faintly, flicked his cigarette into the Seine, and vanished into the shadows of the bridge.
Christian's hand tightened on his pistol. But he did not fire. Something in that exchange told him this was only the beginning.
Back in his rented apartment overlooking Boulevard Saint-Germain, Christian lit a single lamp and poured himself brandy. The reflection in the glass showed his face pale, drawn. For the first time since Warsaw, he felt himself hunted.
Berlin had taught him the oath: The only way out of the shadows is through death.
But Sébastien seemed to thrive in those same shadows and he was not afraid.
Christian placed his pistol on the table, beside the captured documents he'd gathered that night. He stared at the weapon as though it might whisper an answer.
In Paris, the game had changed.
The war in the streets would not be decided by tanks or Luftwaffe bombs. It would be decided in the dark, between two hunters circling each other, neither willing to blink.
Christian knew one thing with certainty:
Sooner or later, only one of them would walk out of the shadows alive.