The closer he drew to Moscow, the thinner the air seemed to grow. Not because of altitude, but because of the silence. A vast, crushing silence that pressed down upon every street, every building and every set of eyes that dared to look too long. The Wehrmacht stood on the city's doorstep. Panzer columns had rolled within sight of the outer suburbs, their tracks cutting deep scars into frozen earth. But they did not enter.
The Soviet capital remained a fortress, ringed with trenches, bristling with anti-aircraft guns, its avenues mined and barricaded. The Führer demanded the spires of the Kremlin. The soldiers demanded food, firewood, and boots that did not tear at the seams.
Christian demanded only one thing: entry.
His passage eastward was not by the roaring front, but by the shadows between. He left the divisions and their stalled artillery behind, slipping into civilian clothes rough enough to blend with refugees. His German uniform he buried beneath mud and pine needles, a relic too dangerous to carry further.
The Abwehr had arranged the path; forged papers, a transport truck with stolen insignia, drivers who spoke Russian like natives. At every checkpoint he felt his pulse climb into his throat, waiting for a soldier's eyes to linger too long, for a question he could not answer.
But each time the barrier lifted. The Red Army, exhausted, searched more for deserters than spies. Christian passed deeper into the Soviet web.
The city revealed itself beneath blackout. Not the dazzling metropolis of parades and banners he had seen in photographs, but a wounded giant, breathing in shallow gasps. Windows were painted dark, their glass covered with thick cloth. Tramlines rattled past in the gloom, carrying civilians with hollow cheeks and stiff movements. Posters of Stalin, Lenin, and the Motherland glared from the walls, lit only by the sweep of searchlights.
The Kremlin loomed at the heart of it all, its towers piercing the night like needles. Floodlights swept the skies above, searching for the next wave of Luftwaffe bombers. From where Christian walked, he could hear distant thunder; not bombs, but the artillery duels on the edge of the city, the Germans testing the ring of steel.
The air smelled of coal smoke, frozen mud, and fear.
In a side street near the Yauza River, he found the mark. A chalk line, barely visible on a doorframe, drawn the way the Abwehr had promised. He knocked once, then twice, then once more. The door opened just enough for an eye to appear. A whisper in Russian:
"Ty iz Berlina?" — You are from Berlin? Christian answered with the agreed phrase, his breath clouding in the air. "Tol'ko teni dvizhutsya bystro." — Only shadows move quickly.
The door opened wider. A man in a worker's coat ushered him in, then closed it behind with three quick locks. The room inside smelled of cabbage and kerosene.
The contact introduced himself only as "Ivan." His hands were thick with callouses, but his eyes were sharp. "You will not speak German here," Ivan warned in a low tone. "Not even a word. You live or die by silence."
Christian nodded.
That night, he was led through a labyrinth beneath the city; cellars, tunnels, and old Tsarist drains that had been re-purposed by men who did not trust daylight. Here the resistance whispered. Some were Communists hardened by purges; others were men and women who hated Stalin more than Hitler, though they would never say it aloud. They did not ask for Christian's name. They did not care. To them he was a tool sharpened for one purpose.
A woman with cropped hair and a scar across her cheek set a candle on the table. She unrolled a crude map of central Moscow. Her voice was steady as she pointed:
"The Kremlin walls are layered. NKVD patrols here, here, and here. They move in pairs. The sewers may carry you beneath, but they are flooded near the Arsenal. If you go in, you will not come out."
Her eyes flickered toward him. "They say you have come to kill a man." Christian did not answer.
When he finally lay down that night on a thin cot in a cellar beneath the city, he felt the silence press heavier than ever. The candle guttered low, shadows bending across the wall like specters.
He thought of the men still shivering in the forests outside the city, fighting for ground an inch at a time. He thought of Müller, perhaps watching him even now through some web of informants. He thought of Kristina, her face etched into his memory, her absence gnawing at him like hunger.
And above it all, he thought of Stalin; the man he had been sent to kill. A figure so vast that his shadow stretched across an empire, and yet he was only flesh and blood and breathing somewhere within those red walls only a few streets away.
Could one bullet truly change the fate of millions? Or would it only bury him nameless in Russian earth? Sleep did not come. Only the slow, steady ticking of a watch on the table, counting down to something he could not yet see.