The border station was a husk of timber and frost. A low, smoke-bleached barracks squatted beside the rails; beyond it, eastward, lay a flat ribbon of pale land and a sky the color of iron filings. Christian reported to a draughty room that smelled of coal, wet wool, and map varnish. A potbellied stove ticked in the corner. On the wall: Europe unrolled in paper; Poland already swallowed, the Baltic States inked in the Reich's color, and then the vast, pale continent of the Soviet Union stretching away until the map itself ran out of breath.
Two officers waited by the table: a lean Abwehr major with nicotine-yellowed fingers (Abwehr I—intelligence), and a square-faced captain with the cold efficiency of Abwehr II (sabotage and special operations). A signals sergeant hovered, sleeves inked with grease, elbows planted near a stack of intercepts bound with twine. When Christian entered, the major glanced up, recognized him, and nodded once.
"Thomas," the major said, using the name the Abwehr had fixed to him. "Good. Sit. We'll be quick, then thorough."
He drew a pencil line along the frontier: from the Baltic down across the Niemen and Bug Rivers to the Carpathians. "Operation Barbarossa. D-Day is 22 June, 03:15 hours. Three Army Groups. Your work sits between them like wire."
He tapped north. "Army Group North—Field Marshal von Leeb. Objective: Leningrad. Initial thrust through Lithuania and Latvia, along the Daugava, pivot east to the city. Panzer Group 4—Hoepner—opens the road, Luftflotte 1 overhead."
His pencil walked to the center. "Army Group Center—Field Marshal von Bock. This is the sledgehammer. Minsk and Smolensk first, then—if OKH holds its nerve—Moscow. Panzer Group 3 under Hoth, Panzer Group 2 under Guderian. Luftflotte 2 covers. This is where the decisive encirclements are planned."
South. "Army Group South—Field Marshal von Rundstedt. Ukraine, the Donbas, the Black Sea coast, and—if we get that far—the gateway to the Caucasus oil. Panzer Group 1—Kleist. Luftflotte 4."
He looked up. "In all, roughly three million troops. Over a hundred and fifty divisions, nineteen out of the one fifty panzer, a like number of motorized infantry—supported by thousands of field guns, and nearly three thousand operational aircraft on Day One. We have speed, surprise, doctrine. The Soviets have depth."
The captain from Abwehr II slid a folder across the table. Inside lay a list of bridge names and coordinates, railway junctions circled in red pencil: Daugavpils, Kaunas, Vilnius, Minsk, Orsha, Gomel, Rovno and Kiev. Beside each, dates, timetables, and cryptic initials.
"Russia is not France," the captain said evenly. "No tidy Sichelschnitt. It's a chain of moving pockets. Encirclements. Kesselschlachten. The General Staff believes the Red Army west of the Dvina and Dnieper can be crushed in six to ten weeks. Beyond that line—the so-called Arkhangelsk–Astrakhan objective—the plan is more… fluid."
He allowed himself the ghost of a smile. "You may write that down as 'wishful thinking' if you like. Not on paper, of course." The major resumed, voice flat with long practice. "Initial objectives: destroy Soviet air power on the ground in the first forty-eight hours; rupture the frontier defenses; drive panzer spearheads to the great rivers; close the bags at Bialystok–Minsk, then Smolensk. North turns on Leningrad for a siege; South envelops Kiev and the Ukrainian breadbasket.
If Moscow remains feasible, we launch Operation Typhoon in autumn. If."
He tapped a side panel on the map where river names ran like veins. "The enemy today is mispositioned—forward echelons stacked near the border. Command and control are brittle after the purges. But the Soviet Union is not Poland, and not France. They can lose armies and still field more. Expect reserve fronts to appear out of nowhere and expect factories to move east on rails you will fail to cut.
Expect the T-34 and KV-1—few at first, then multiplying—shock to our panzer doctrine." The signals sergeant spoke for the first time, laying out a sheaf of intercepts. "Funkaufklärung already shows frantic Soviet radio traffic—undisciplined, often in clear, sometimes with simple transposition ciphers. That will change. For a while, our listening will be easy; then it will become expensive. Our people will ride forward with the panzer groups, direction-finding, triangulating front headquarters, artillery nets, rail movement orders. Your couriers will carry decrypt summaries forward twice daily."
He set down a list: call signs, probable frequencies, expected net times. "When in doubt, watch the silence. When a net goes dark, something is moving."
The captain slid a different folder across. "Abwehr II tasks—your home soil. Forward demolition and seizures in the opening hours by Brandenburg units; after that, rolling sabotage with local auxiliaries and recruited minorities. We will seize intact crossings on the Dvina and Berezina if we can; if we cannot, we blow them behind us to clean up pursuing formations. Rail gauge is wrong in the east; the army wants lines converted as fast as we advance. Your job is to harass conversion crews that aren't ours, and protect the ones that are."
He looked Christian in the eye. "Bridge seizures may use deception. Captured uniforms. Local dialects. You know the edge you walk." A smaller map appeared—red arrows converging on telegraph hubs and marshalling yards. "Priority sabotage: telegraph repeaters, transformer stations, water towers for locomotive depots, turntables, and especially switchyards. Ten rails cut at the right ladder track can paralyze a front for twelve hours. Twelve hours in mechanized war is a lifetime."
The major's pencil moved again, this time to a column labeled Assumptions. "Ours, and the Führer's. He assumes the Soviet state will crack once we take the western heartlands. He assumes the population will welcome us as liberators from Bolshevism, especially in the Baltic and Ukraine. Some will. Many will not. NKVD stay-behind units will organize sabotage; they will use mines and booby traps. We must be foxes before we are wolves."
He flipped a thin, grey folder—the kind that smelled of something beyond war. "You will also hear of special directives. The Barbarossa Decree. The Commissar Order. The Einsatzgruppen behind the front. That is not your writ," he added, voice carefully neutral. "But you will see them. And you will understand what follows us in our wake."
For a moment the stove ticked, loud as a clock. Christian said nothing. He remembered Paris—the courtyard, the rifles, the bodies that fell like wheat. He imagined the same pattern on endless plains where there was no courtyard, only snow.
The captain continued, brisk again. "Logistics: this is the limiter. We advance on narrow roads and farm tracks. Dust in June; mud by October; ice by December. The Soviets run a wider rail gauge; each kilometer converted costs men and hours we do not own. We have too few trucks and too many horses. Fuel will decide the length of your stride more than the enemy does. Mark that down twice."
The sergeant added, "Weather windows. Rasputitsa in autumn will turn roads to porridge; spring is worse, but you won't reach spring unless we miscalculate. Winter temperatures will cripple unprepared units; lubricants and weapons jam; men die in their sleep. Your radios too; keep them warm."
The major turned a card toward Christian: Army Group liaison points; cipher keys for the month; dead drops along the Minsk–Smolensk axis; cover names for predesignated informants in Vilnius, Minsk, Orsha and Vitebsk. "HUMINT—Abwehr I. Use priests, railway clerks, telegraphists, local intelligentsia embittered by collectivization. Vet twice; trust nobody. The NKVD are not artists, but they are patient."
Another card: Particulars—Brandenburg detachments. "Small teams are already forward; Lithuanian and Latvian speakers seeded along the Daugava. Similar for Galicia and Volhynia. Objectives: bridges, signal towers, command post seizures in the first dawn. If you receive a signal word 'Linde,' that's a go-ahead to coordinate with them for deeper strikes."
The captain's mouth flattened. "Failures: you should know them before you create them. If panzers outrun their infantry screens, pockets do not close and Soviets slip out—then you fight them again on new lines. If rails are not cut in two places—front and rear—rolling stock evacuates industry and reserves beyond our reach. If political warfare is mishandled, partisans bloom like mold in summer. Do not deliver us speed and give it back with neglect."
The major pushed one last sheet: Indicators of collapse versus Indicators of mobilization. On one side: mass surrenders, abandoned armor, disintegrating radio nets and loss of river lines. On the other: fresh armies appearing beyond the Dnieper; increased night train traffic eastbound; new factory codes in intercepts; reinforcement of Moscow axis while Leningrad and Kiev absorb pressure.
"If we see the right-hand column by August," he said quietly, "the six-week war is dead, and we are writing a different book."
He let the silence gather, then resumed in a lower tone. "From our side: The Luftwaffe will open the door. Their runways cratered and aircraft burned in rows. After that, our air cover thins with distance. Security in the rear is a patchwork; Feld gendarmerie, Order Police, and those… other formations. When you operate in the seams, do it fast. Anything slow will be eaten by wolves; ours or theirs."
He capped his pencil. "Your personal orders, Thomas: attach to a forward reconnaissance element of Panzer Group 3 for the Minsk–Smolensk phase. Establish a reporting chain that does not break at speed. Identify two bridges and one marshalling yard each week for either capture or destruction depending on the front's appetite. You'll liaise with an Abwehr II team for the first seventy-two hours and then operate with local assets you raise yourself. If you find a reliable railway timetable in Soviet hands, you will be forgiven many sins."
The captain folded his hands. "And remember: we were wrong in Poland about how fast the government would break; we were right in France about how blind our enemy could be. Here, we may be wrong and right in the same week. Adapt faster than the map."
The stove popped. In the corner, a kettle began to whisper. Outside, a freight wagon clanked as couplings took up the slack. The map, so clean, so certain, lay like a promise no one could keep.
Christian signed the receipt for his cipher tables. He tucked the dead-drop list into his breast pocket, feeling its weight like a stone. For a heartbeat, he saw Katia's quick smile and heard Kristina's whisper in the candlelit Paris room. Then he shut the door on both.
As he stood to go, the major added, almost as an afterthought, "If you must choose between a broken bridge and a broken radio net, break the net. Blind a corps, and the bridge is theirs for nothing. Blind an army, and the road belongs to you."
Christian nodded.
On the threshold the captain said, "One last item. If you hear the word 'Typhoon' in autumn, you'll know what it means. Winter will have a say in that."
Christian stepped back into the corridor. The hallway smelled of rope and canvas. Men brushed by him with the unhurried urgency of those who believe the timetable will hold.
Outside, the east waited without expression. He pulled on his gloves, lifted his collar against the wind, and walked toward the siding where a line of grey trucks coughed to life. Beyond the wire, the land unrolled; low, pale, endless, toward Minsk, Smolensk, and whatever lay after maps ran out. He did not look back. He could not afford to.
The work had been named. The hour had been set. The war, at last, had said what it wanted from him.