The days of 1941 moved slowly. Fields once green were now seas of mud, vast plains devouring the boots of infantry and the wheels of machines. The men called it Rasputitsa; the season of impassable roads, where even panzers sank like ships in quicksand. Horses died in the mud, their carcasses left as mute monuments to the futility of speed.
Yet the orders from Berlin cut through the mire with steel precision: Moscow must fall. Operation Typhoon had been declared; a strike not merely to capture a city, but to crush the Soviet soul.
The plan, read aloud in smoke-filled bunkers, sounded magnificent on paper. Three great prongs would encircle Moscow. Army Group Center, the strongest force Germany had ever assembled, would sweep forward like a scythe. Panzer spearheads would envelop Soviet armies at Vyazma and Bryansk.
By Christmas, the generals boasted, the Reich would celebrate victory beneath the Kremlin's spires. Christian sat in the back of one such briefing, his uniform damp with the day's rain, his boots caked in filth. He watched the maps being inked with arrows, lines thrusting eastward as if the land itself would obey.
But outside the command tent he had seen the other truth: men wrapped in rags to fend off the creeping cold, fuel trucks stalled in endless queues, faces already gray with exhaustion. And always, beneath the thunder of orders and the rumble of artillery, a quieter war moved; one of secrets, of shadows.
When Admiral Canaris appeared again, it was as though he had been summoned by fate. Not in Berlin this time, but at a secluded forward headquarters west of Smolensk. He arrived without ceremony, his presence almost spectral, the sort of man who could step into a room without anyone noticing until he chose to speak.
"Christian," he greeted softly, his voice almost drowned by the wind that rattled the windows. "You have seen the front. You know it is not as the generals describe."
Christian nodded, feeling the fatigue heavy in his bones.
"The Führer dreams of Moscow," Canaris continued, his eyes cold and unreadable. "But dreams are fragile. They shatter easily against the stone of reality. A hundred divisions may not break this land. But sometimes…" He leaned closer, lowering his voice until it was barely above a whisper. "…sometimes a single act can change the world."
Christian stiffened. The Admiral's words had that particular cadence; the tone he used when preparing to shift a man's fate.
Later, in a room lit only by a single lamp, Canaris spoke plainly. The Abwehr had learned that Stalin himself remained in Moscow. He had refused evacuation, despite German bombers turning the skies red and Soviet ministers begging him to leave. His presence anchored the Red Army's will.
"Imagine," Canaris said, his hands folded neatly before him, "if that presence were extinguished. The enemy would stumble like a body without a head. Perhaps the war itself could end."
Christian's throat felt dry. He stared at the Admiral, trying to gauge whether this was another of his riddles, another test. But Canaris's gaze was unwavering.
"You would have contacts in the city," the Admiral explained. "The underground still breathes there. They will guide you. Your task will not be written. It will not exist on paper. But you understand me, don't you?"
Christian exhaled slowly. "You want me to kill him." For a moment there was only silence. Then Canaris inclined his head. "If such a chance presents itself. Yes."
The words seemed to echo in Christian's skull. Assassinate Joseph Stalin. A mission absurd in its audacity, suicidal in its design yet spoken with the calmness of a man ordering coffee.
Christian did not answer immediately. His mind flickered elsewhere to Kristina's arms around him in Paris, to the ring he had given back to her with trembling hands. To Kristina, his family back in Berlin but never far from his thoughts. To Müller's face, pale and sharp, eyes forever watching him with suspicion.
This mission could be his escape or his end.
"You hesitate," Canaris murmured. Christian looked up, forcing his voice to steady. "Because I understand what you are asking. To kill a man is one thing. To kill that man is to gamble with history."
The Admiral's thin smile returned. "History is always a gamble. The question is who dares to wager."
The days that followed blurred together. While the great armies crawled forward through mud and frost, Christian was drawn into another world; one of maps smuggled from Moscow, codes whispered in half-lit rooms, small groups of men trained to vanish into crowds.
He studied the Kremlin's layout, its thick walls and guarded gates. He was told of secret routes through sewers, of safe houses where sympathizers hid, of couriers willing to risk everything for a cause. Each detail pressed down on him like a stone in his pocket small, but gathering weight until it was impossible to forget.
At night, sleep eluded him. He lay listening to the howl of wind across the steppe, the distant thunder of artillery, the coughing of soldiers in tents nearby. He remembered Kristina's tear-lined face, the feel of her hand gripping his before he pushed her away for safety. He remembered Müller's smirk when Kristina slipped through his fingers.
And in the darkness, he wondered: was he moving toward destiny, or toward an unmarked grave in the Russian snow?
By late October, frost rimed the earth like glass. The air was sharper now, cutting into lungs, stinging exposed skin. Men huddled around fires, muttering the name of Napoleon with bitter laughter.
The generals still spoke of Moscow as if it were already theirs, but among the soldiers, doubt was spreading like a second winter. Christian packed his gear in silence. His mission had no fanfare, no written order and no promise of return. He would leave the columns of mud-splattered men and step into the shadows of
Moscow, carrying not just his weapons, but the weight of an empire's gamble.
He looked once at the horizon, where the clouds thickened as if the sky itself were preparing to collapse.
The order tolled in his head like a bell: assassinate Joseph Stalin. Whether it was deliverance or damnation, only the road ahead would decide.
And so, as the engines roared and the convoy lurched forward, Christian felt the silence settle into his bones. The spires of the Kremlin were still distant, but already he could feel them watching him, like sentinels of fate waiting for his arrival.