The first week of the war felt like an avalanche loosed from the peaks, relentless and deafening.
Bad news rolled eastward in suffocating waves, each crest breaking closer to Moscow:
Minsk had fallen.
Smolensk was under siege.
Entire divisions were vanishing into the "cauldrons" of German encirclement, their signals blinking out like dying stars.
On the massive operations map, the red arrows—once symbols of socialist might—were buckling, bending backward under the weight of the Blitzkrieg.
Ilya stood before the map, almost able to hear the phantom sound of history book pages turning. He had once memorized these names in a quiet library; now, he watched them being struck through with jagged, desperate ink. Moscow was no longer a distant capital. It was a target.
The air in the Stavka headquarters carried a lethal tension. It wasn't panic—it was something more brittle. A stiffness that precedes a total collapse of judgment.
"The enemy cannot be advancing at this velocity."
"The intelligence is a fabrication. Defeatism."
"We cannot authorize another step back. Not an inch."
The arguments circled the same pride-worn ground, a carousel of denial.
For the first time, Ilya was permitted to sit in the corner of the war room. He was a ghost in the machine—an "irregular variable" brought in by the secret police and not yet liquidated. He remained invisible until the moment the generals hit a wall of indecision.
Then, he spoke.
"The Wehrmacht will sever this railway within seventy-two hours."
He stepped from the shadows and pointed a steady finger at a thin, unremarkable line on the map. "And once the tracks are gone, they will pivot here. Toward the gap in the flank."
The room went tomb-quiet. A general let out a short, jagged laugh. "Are you a strategist, boy—or a prophet?"
Ilya didn't flinch. He didn't defend his credentials. He simply stated a date. A bridge. A regiment.
Three days later, the courier arrived, breathless and ashen-faced. The railway had been pulverized. The pivot had begun. There was no triumph in the room—only a heavier, more suffocating silence.
That evening, Ilya was summoned.
The office was a cavern of shadows. A single lamp pooled light onto the desk, illuminating a map, a pipe, and the man who held the fate of millions in his hands. Stalin sat behind the light, his eyes two burning embers behind a veil of tobacco smoke—sharp enough to dissect a man's soul.
"You claim to see their next move before they make it," Stalin said. His voice was a low, even rasp.
Ilya nodded. "I do."
"You also see that we are in full retreat."
"Yes, Comrade Stalin."
"And yet," the leader leaned forward, the light catching the hard lines of his face, "you advise it? You advocate for the backward step?"
Stalin's gaze was a physical weight. The silence stretched until it felt like it might snap.
"Explain yourself."
Ilya drew a slow, calculated breath. He wasn't speaking to a man; he was speaking to History itself.
"Retreating to Moscow is not an admission of defeat," Ilya said, his voice echoing in the gloom.
"Go on," Stalin prompted.
Ilya met the eyes that had sent thousands to their deaths without a blink.
"Because Moscow is not the end of the road. It is the trap. This is where they will finally make the mistake that ends them."