The name was nothing more than ink on a slip of paper.
The face was nothing more than a shadow caught in his binoculars.
The order was simple: eliminate him.
Christian had received a lot like it, and he had executed them with precision, leaving no ripples behind. But this time, this one name in the ruin of Stalingrad felt different from the first moment he trailed the commissar down the blackened streets.
The man walked quickly, head bent against the wind, the brim of his cap dusted white with snow. The city around them lay in ruins, hollow shells of buildings, frozen corpses half-buried in the rubble, smoke rising from chimneys only to be torn away by the bitter air.
Christian kept to the shadows, his hand resting inside his coat where the pistol lay. He cataloged the streets, the blind corners, the windows where eyes might linger. Routine. Clinical. Yet for the first time in months, he felt his body resisting his own commands, as if every step deeper into the city's veins weighed more than the last.
The commissar was not alone.
At his side walked a woman; slender, her coat threadbare, her hands clasped around his arm as though afraid the wind might snatch him away. A child darted in front of them, her boots clattering against ice, her laughter bright as a bell in the deadened night.
Christian stiffened. A wife. A daughter. He hadn't been told.
They turned down a narrow lane and entered a building that still held its bones despite the bombing. Faint orange light spilled from a window; oil lamps, weak but defiant. Christian moved closer, pressing himself against a doorway across the street. The wind cut through his coat as he watched.
Through the cracked pane of glass, he saw them. The commissar sat at a table, his cap laid aside. His wife set down a chipped ceramic bowl, steam curling into the air. The girl climbed onto his lap, and he tore a crust of bread in two, handing the larger piece to her with a crooked smile.
Christian's hand closed around the pistol. His breath caught. This was the chance. A clean shot through the window, the target's skull against peeling plaster. Over in seconds.
But he did not move.
The commissar bent his head to kiss his daughter's hair. The girl giggled, her laughter muffled against his chest. It was a sound that should not have existed in Stalingrad, a city of ash and graves. It was fragile, defiant, almost holy.
Christian's finger hovered near the trigger. His vision blurred, not with snow, but with memory.
The knife in his hand. Antonov's eyes widening. The hot rush of blood pouring over his skin, seeping into the cracks between his fingers. He had told himself it was duty, that the Reich demanded sacrifice, that the knife was just a tool. But no amount of duty could wash the blood away.
And now, this?
The child looked up, eyes wide, her smile breaking into small white teeth. And in her gaze, Christian saw Kristina. Not as she was now, fragile in the shadows of resistance, but as she had once been; laughing, bright, untouched by war.
His chest constricted. He lowered the pistol a fraction. His body trembled.
Pull the trigger.
For Berlin.
For survival.
But his hand fell slack. The pistol sagged back into his coat, the weight of it unbearable.
Christian turned away from the window. His boots crunched softly on the snow as he slipped back into the shadows, the warmth of the commissar's home receding into the cold. Each step felt like betrayal of his orders, of the Reich, of the image he had tried so hard to maintain.
By dawn, his report was empty. The commissar still lived. The paper bore only silence, and silence in war was dangerous. Christian sat alone in his quarters that night, staring at his trembling hands. His reflection in the cracked mirror above the washbasin looked alien; sunken eyes, pale skin, the faint outline of a man crumbling from within.
Are we truly better than Stalin? He wondered. Or are we all the same? Murderers cloaked in flags.
Later, in the corridors of the German headquarters, Müller leaned against a wall, cigarette glowing between his fingers. He exhaled slowly, eyes fixed on Christian as he passed.
He said nothing. He did not need to. His gaze lingered like a blade pressed to the back of Christian's neck. And then, with the same calm precision as ever, Müller opened his small black notebook, wrote a single word, and closed it.
Hesitation.
The word sat like a death sentence between them, though unspoken and Christian knew Müller would never forget.