The room was narrow, smelling of smoke and damp wool. Christian sat before a scarred table, its surface pocked with knife cuts and blackened rings where mugs had burned into the wood. Admiral Canaris leaned forward, hands folded, his pale eyes fixed and patient. To his right, Herr Müller lounged in a chair, cigarette smoke curling around his head like a crown of ash.
It was meant to be a debrief. Instead, it felt like a confession.
"Tell me of Antonov," Canaris said at last, his voice even, almost priestly.
Christian's throat tightened. He lowered his gaze to his hands, remembering too vividly how they had looked that night; slick, trembling, not his own.
"He was still in the building. He was working late," he began. "I took out the guard in the corridor and entered the office. The snow was falling. His guards had already scattered. It was just him alone in the room."
The words faltered. His pulse pounded in his ears.
"I stepped into the room from the corridor and He turned when he heard me. Before he could speak, I struck. One thrust, here…" He touched the side of his torso with two fingers. "It was fast, but not silent."
The silence in the room seemed to lean closer.
"His blood…" Christian swallowed. "…was warm. Too warm. It sprayed across my hands, my coat. He gasped once, reached toward me. His eyes found mine. And in them… there was no fear. Only recognition, as if he had been waiting for me."
His voice cracked, and he pressed his fists against the table, steadying himself.
"I lay him down. His blood stained the floor so quickly. I tried to move him, but the guards had heard and were coming to the room."
Canaris nodded, eyes unreadable, as though weighing the confession against the ledger of war. "Why did you try to move him?" Christian couldn't answer and Canaris let him be.
"You left no trace?"
"None."
Müller chuckled softly, blowing smoke toward the lamp. "Snow drinks blood quickly. Useful. The Reich is proud." His smile was sharp, wolfish. "Do not forget, Christian, you are alive because you can kill better than the men across the river."
The words scraped at him, but Christian said nothing.
The debrief stretched long, Canaris drawing out details; routes taken, signals sent, the timing of escape. Christian recited the facts mechanically, clinging to precision. Müller only added a handful of questions, each delivered like a lash, each reminding him that failure meant more than death.
When it ended, Christian felt hollowed out, as if he had left pieces of himself on that table. That night, he had a dream.
The room returned, endless, unbroken. Antonov fell again and again, his blood steaming as he hit the floor of the room. No matter how many times Christian wiped his hands, the warmth clung, as though it had soaked into his skin.
Then the room dissolved. He stood in a vast white field. From the horizon came the Red Army; not men but a tide, endless, faceless, surging forward with banners that dripped fire instead of cloth. Their voices were not shouts but chants, rolling like thunder, shaking the ground.
Christian raised his pistol. He pulled the trigger. The weapon shattered in his hands, falling away as ash. The gray dust sifted through his fingers, carried off by the storm wind. He was left unarmed, naked before the tide.
He turned to flee. His legs moved but the snow held him, heavy, dragging him down. The tide surged closer; bayonets glinting, eyes blazing red, boots pounding like drums.
He screamed, but his voice was gone. Then he saw the coffin. Antonov's coffin, borne high on soldiers' shoulders, draped in the Soviet flag. Behind it marched men, women, children—thousands, tens of thousands. Women threw flowers, their petals staining the snow red. Men clenched their fists to the sky.
"Za Rodinu! Za Stalina!"
The coffin opened. Antonov sat up, his blood dark-red, seeping from his ribs, eyes still burning. He raised a bloodied hand and pointed at Christian and the tide roared forward, unstoppable, engulfing him.
And then, he saw them.
Kristina. Standing among the mourners, her face pale, her eyes wet. She reached for him, lips trembling, but when she opened her mouth it was not words of love that escaped; it was a chant, the same chant the soldiers bellowed, damning his name, cursing him.
Behind her, his family appeared. His mother's shawl, his father's bent shoulders, Katia's face—each one contorted in grief and rage. They held black candles, flames whipped by the storm. One by one, they turned their backs to him.
The snow at his feet turned crimson. The tide was no longer soldiers, it was Kristina, his family, his victims, all fused together, eyes hollow, mouths chanting in unison.
Their voices sounded like thunder, the ground itself quaking beneath the weight of their condemnation.
Christian tried to run again. His legs broke free, but the snow clutched at his ankles, turning into hands, dozens of them, clawing, dragging him down. He looked back and his gun was gone, his knife too. Only his bare hands remained, still stained with Antonov's blood.
The tide surged, swallowed him, and in the last moment he saw Kristina's face a few inches from his own. Her eyes blazed like fire.
"You cannot wash it away my love."
The tide broke over him.
Christian woke thrashing, the taste of iron in his mouth, his heart hammering like artillery. He pressed his palms to his eyes, but still he felt the phantom warmth of Antonov's blood. His sheets clung damp to his skin, heavy as shrouds.
For a long time he lay staring into the dark, unable to breathe, one thought gnawing at him until dawn broke pale and cold:
Are we truly any better than them?
And for the first time, he could not silence the answer rising within him.