The top floor of the Svea Shipping building was more command post than office. No gilt, no pretense — only maps, smoke, and the sharp tang of chemical developer. The walls hummed with quiet purpose, the kind found only in operations that could topple governments.
Koba stood at the long table, studying the message Kato's courier had delivered an hour earlier. Beside him waited two men who formed the cornerstone of his rising empire: Professor Ipatieff, eyes alight with feverish brilliance, and Dr. Arbatov, calm and precise, the anchor to Ipatieff's storm.
On the table lay the decoded note. Three words.
SANDVIKEN. PUTILOV. ARTILLERY.
To most, nonsense. To these three men, revelation.
"Chromium steel from Sandviken," Ipatieff whispered, trembling. "The missing piece." His voice grew hushed with awe. "Before the war, the French experimented with picric acid shells — devastating pressure, catastrophic barrel failure. But with chromium alloys…" He exhaled. "The Russians have solved it. They're building guns that won't split open. Guns designed to outrange everyone."
Koba's gaze didn't lift from the map. "Guns that decide who holds the north."
Arbatov traced shipping routes across the Baltic. "The chromium will come through the Åland Islands, hidden in ore convoys under the Swedish flag. Perfect neutral cover."
"If we stop it," Ipatieff murmured, "we don't delay their heavy artillery program. We annihilate it."
Koba nodded once. Final. "Then we stop it."
He pressed a button on the desk. Murat arrived within seconds, jaw bruised, posture sharp.
"Gather the Finns who know the archipelago," Koba ordered. "No mistakes. No survivors. We're sinking a ship."
Murat nodded. Gone.
Across the street, wind scoured the rooftop of a warehouse. Stern lay prone beside a chimney stack, the cold brick biting into his cheek. He had been still for hours, breath rising in faint plumes.
Beside him, Yagoda shivered inside his coat, eyes red from lack of sleep. Below them, the Svea Shipping building pulsed with activity — couriers, accountants, enforcers, a rotating mask of faces.
Stern watched all of them through binoculars, waiting for one face. One ghost.
Just after ten, a dark Adler sedan rolled up. The door opened.
A man stepped out — not in uniform, not in the trappings of ideology, but in the aura of quiet, unassailable power. His suit immaculate, fedora angled, presence unmistakable.
The light from the gas lamp revealed the scar, the heavy-lidded eyes, the familiar mustache.
Stern's breath hitched.
"It's him," he whispered. "It's Koba."
Yagoda moved clumsily beside him, raising his own lenses.
Another figure emerged to greet Koba — massive, scarred, bruised. Murat. The same man who had left Stern bleeding in an alley.
The two clasped hands and vanished inside.
In that flicker of gaslight, Stern saw everything. The betrayer and his fist. The architect and his enforcer. The Warlock and his demon.
Rage smoldered inside him, sharp and clean.
He set the binoculars aside and unwrapped a long object from his pack. Metal gleamed in the dim light — a scoped Mosin-Nagant rifle. The only truth he had left.
He crawled to the roof's edge, the parapet cool beneath his palms. Through the scope, the world shrank to perfect clarity. The doorway framed Koba in motion — composed, untouchable.
Lenin's order echoed like a sentence. Neutralized. Permanently.
Stern drew in a breath.
The crosshairs rested over Koba's chest.
Every humiliation. Every corpse. Every betrayal. All of it funneled into this one moment.
His finger tightened.
And the world held its breath.
Through the rifle scope, the world was reduced to four inches of trembling light. Inside that circle, Joseph Vissarionovich Djugashvili — Koba — lived.
Stern saw the fine weave of his suit, the glint of silver at his temples, the rise and fall of breath beneath the cloth. Everything else — the city, the war, the harbor — dissolved into silence.
This was justice. This was vengeance. This was the end.
He began to squeeze the trigger.
Then Koba shifted — a slight step, casual, but enough to ruin the shot.
Two other men exited the building behind him. Stern hesitated, eye narrowing. These weren't soldiers. They carried briefcases. One rumpled, hair wild — a scholar with movements too restless to be military. The other neat, controlled, hands steady as a surgeon.
They weren't subordinates. They weren't guards.
They deferred to Koba, but as partners, not servants.
They opened their cases and showed him diagrams, sketches, formulas. Koba examined each page with interest, nodding once, closing the folder with satisfaction.
Stern's breath froze.
This wasn't the behavior of a lone traitor.
This was a council.
A government in exile.
Koba wasn't running a network. He was running a state — a shadow empire of scientists, operatives, financiers, informants. The professor and the surgeon weren't flunkies. They were the engine of his machine.
The realization hit Stern like a blow to the ribs.
Kill Koba here and now? The Germans would replace him within days. His scientists would continue. His funds, his agents, his strategy — none of it depended on his breathing. The hydra would sprout new heads.
Lenin's order had never meant assassination.
It meant eradication.
Slowly, Stern eased his finger off the trigger. The rifle grew heavy, obscene. Beside him, Yagoda exhaled shakily.
"Why?" Yagoda whispered. "You had him."
Stern watched Koba and his companions enter the waiting car and disappear into the Stockholm fog.
Only then did he speak.
"Look closely, Yagoda. Those weren't guards. They were the brain." He began dismantling the rifle with mechanical calm. "Koba isn't one man. He's the nucleus of something bigger."
He looked out across the harbor — lights glittering like the map of a war no one knew had begun.
"Killing him would change nothing," he said. "We have to destroy what he's built. Every strand of his web."
He turned to Yagoda, eyes like shards of ice.
"This isn't a hunt anymore," Stern said. "It's a purge."
The personal vendetta was over.
The war of shadows had begun.