Koba stood before the great map of the Eastern Front — a sprawling wall of color and chaos. Pins, strings, and notes covered it like veins across a body. To most, it was indecipherable. To him, it was alive — a machine of death he could read like scripture.
Beside him stood Oberst Walter Nicolai, posture rigid, eyes sharp, radiating the cold impatience of a man who preferred results to theories.
"You promise a victory, Herr Koba," Nicolai said. "Yet the front remains a graveyard. Millions of men. Miles of mud. What can your handful of spies and your leaflets do that my entire bureau cannot?"
Koba didn't answer. His mind was elsewhere — in databases that didn't exist yet, in postwar analyses never written, in a future he carried like a curse. He reached forward and tapped a point on the map between two minor Polish towns.
"Here," he said. "In May, this will be the place. Your armies will achieve the greatest breakthrough of the war."
Nicolai's brow twitched. "Every soldier from Riga to the Carpathians expects an offensive. That is hardly revelation."
Koba turned, voice dropping into a calm, lethal certainty. "I don't just know where. I know how. And I know how to turn it from a victory into the death sentence of the Russian Empire."
Then he spoke — not guessing, not theorizing, but reciting history.
"General von Mackensen's Eleventh Army will lead the strike," he said, tracing the line. "Reinforced by the Austro-Hungarian Fourth Army. Their target: the Russian Third Army under General Dimitriev."
He tapped the pinned name. "Dimitriev is brave but vain. He expects reinforcements that will never come. Stavka has abandoned him for the Carpathians. He believes the attack will come north. He is wrong."
Nicolai's jaw tightened.
"The key is artillery," Koba continued. "Four hours. A creeping barrage — not random shelling, but a curtain of precision fire. Their shallow trenches will collapse. No dugouts. They'll suffocate before they can shoot back."
He pointed to a red mark — the Russian supply depot. "Their guns have almost no shells. Ivanov has stripped them bare. Dimitriev's batteries will die in silence."
Nicolai inhaled, slow and tight. This was not intelligence. It was prophecy.
"When the infantry advances," Koba said, "the Russian lines won't bend. They'll collapse. And that is where my men come in. They're already in place, spreading the right whispers. When the line shatters, they'll cut wires, spread rumors, organize mass surrender. Defeat will become disintegration. The prisoners will pour into your camps not as soldiers, but as carriers of despair."
Silence consumed the room. Nicolai stared at him, shaken by how small his own understanding suddenly felt.
Finally, Koba broke the stillness. "I don't want payment," he said softly. "I want a man."
He slid a folder across the desk. Nicolai opened it.
"Vladimir Ipatieff," he read.
"He's more than a chemist," Koba said. "High-pressure catalysis. Industrial synthesis. A mind that will reshape warfare. He's wasting away in a camp near Neu-Sandez. When your offensive rolls through, his camp will descend into chaos. In that confusion, he disappears. I want him here."
Nicolai closed the folder. "If even half of what you predict comes to pass, he is yours."
He moved to the door, then paused. "But such a recovery cannot be left to ordinary soldiers. You will lead the extraction yourself. Consider it a test of your fine machine."
The words struck with the force of a commandment. Koba nodded slowly. "Understood."
When Nicolai left, Koba turned back to the map. The pins stared back at him like accusing eyes. The future he had invoked was coming — loud, merciless, unstoppable. And for the first time in years, fear brushed against him like a cold hand.
The requisitioned manor felt more like a tomb than a headquarters. Rain whispered against the blacked-out windows, a thin veil of sound beneath distant artillery. The thunder seeped through the walls, into the floorboards, into the mind.
In the dim study, Koba stood before the detailed map of the Gorlice sector. The bright pins looked delicate against the oak wall, but to him they formed a blueprint of annihilation. He could see the numbers as if already written — four hundred thousand Russian casualties, ninety thousand German and Austro-Hungarian. Half a million lives. A catastrophe he had made possible.
And tomorrow he would walk into it himself.
The door clicked; Kato entered with a tray and a single cup of coffee. Her face was pale in the lamplight. She set the cup down gently and turned to leave.
"Stay," he said.
The word came out raw, almost pleading. She froze with her hand on the door. He crossed the room slowly and placed a trembling palm between her shoulder blades. Her muscles were rigid, braced against him.
"I need you to," he whispered.
She didn't answer. He guided her into the bedroom — bare, impersonal, smelling of damp linen and distant smoke. Rain hammered louder here.
He turned her to face him. Her eyes were dark, unreadable. His fingers fumbled at the top button of her dress. She neither helped nor resisted. The dress slid to the floor. Her thin shift clung to her frame, ghostlike in the dimness.
He touched the straps. Again, she didn't move.
He pushed her onto the bed. She lay back without a word. He undressed quickly, almost frantically, as if the act could resurrect something already dead between them. He whispered her name — once, twice — but she remained still, eyes open, unblinking.
What passed between them was not closeness. Not passion. It was desperation, an attempt to claw warmth out of a body that no longer belonged to him. Rain filled the silence where her voice should have been.
When it was over, the emptiness was unbearable.
She rose, dressed quietly. Each button was a verdict.
"Is that what you needed to be brave, Koba?" she asked.
The words pierced him with surgical precision.
She left without waiting for an answer. The door clicked shut with the cold finality of a coffin lid.
Koba sat in silence, listening to the rain swallow the edge of dawn. Then he dressed, piece by piece, putting the armor back on, sealing himself inside the machine he had become.
By morning, he would lead the offensive he had foretold.
And he would walk into the fire alone.