Spring, 1915.
Europe had been at war for nine months, and its only real product was mud and corpses. On the grounds of a seized Prussian estate outside Berlin, Koba was building something different — a weapon.
The place was once a Junker's pride, all manicured gardens and marble halls. Now it bore a dull, bureaucratic name: The Grünewald Institute for Eastern Peoples. To the German General Staff, it was a laboratory for psychological warfare. To the men training inside its walls, it was a strange, secret world. To Koba, it was an empire.
From the wooden platform overlooking the estate's fields, he watched the work unfold. Below him sprawled a perfect imitation of hell — trenches gouged into the earth, sandbags sagging, boards slick with mud. The air stank of wet soil and gun oil. What had been a lawn was now a patchwork of dugouts and wire.
Pavel barked orders over the squelch of boots. "Again! Move when the firing starts, not after! Fire when you stop, not when you run! Cover your comrade!"
The men obeyed. They were a rough mix — captured Russians, exiled radicals, and Berlin criminals bound to Koba by loyalty or fear. Together they were the raw clay for his experiment: squads trained in fire and maneuver, a method of leapfrogging attacks that belonged to a century still to come.
Koba watched in silence, one hand tucked inside his coat where the old injury ached. He was no longer a fugitive revolutionary. He was a commander. A builder of systems.
He climbed down into the trench and faced a group of new recruits — frightened men, already half defeated. His voice was quiet, but it carried through the damp air.
"The men who sent you to the front don't care if you live or die," he said. "The ones you fight want you dead. I'm the only man here who needs you alive."
His eyes swept the line. "Your life is a tool. Don't waste it on pride or God. Keep it because I say it has value."
He pointed upward. "Listen to the sky. An eighty-eight cracks sharp and clean — lie flat and you'll live. A howitzer sounds like a train falling from heaven — if you hear it, it's already too late. Learn the difference. That's how you survive."
He nudged a small bundle with his boot. "You'll get two pairs of socks. Keep one dry. Change them every night. The man who doesn't will rot alive. And when he's no use to me, I'll leave him behind. Understood?"
The murmured answers came like a prayer. Koba's lessons weren't about ideology. They were about not dying — and that, more than any doctrine, made the men believe in him.
He left them to Pavel's drills and returned to the manor house — once gold and marble, now headquarters. The cage had grown larger, but it was still a cage.
Kato was in the library.
Two floors of dark wood and stolen books surrounded her. She sat beneath a single lamp, cross-referencing reports, Russian newspapers, German field notes. Her fingers moved quickly, methodically. She was no longer his partner, not even his ally — just a piece of machinery in the empire he'd built. Her title was Head Archivist. In truth, she was the brain of his operation, dissecting armies and officers with the precision of a surgeon.
When Koba entered, she didn't look up.
"Anything from Dvinsk?" he asked.
"The new conscripts have seventy rounds each," she said, still reading. "General Plehve is complaining about rations again. Morale in the Fifth Army is brittle."
"Good. Flag the officers from Baltic nobility — they'll hate the Tsar first."
"Already done," she replied, voice flat.
He stood watching her for a moment — the glow of the lamp on her hair, the silence between them as wide as the steppe. She was safe, fed, alive. He had everything he had fought for. And somehow, it all tasted like ash.
He turned and left.
When the door clicked shut, Kato stopped. She waited, listening. Then she reached into her dress and pulled out a small notebook, its pages covered in a coded shorthand — lines of Georgian verse twisted into secret meaning.
She wrote:
N. Walter. Oberst. G.S. Met K. 15 April. Subject: agent deployment, Warsaw line. Shipment: 200 Mauser rifles, 20 crates grenades confirmed.
Every name, every shipment, every meeting — recorded and hidden. She was mapping her prison from the inside, waiting for the day she could tear it down.
That afternoon, a black motorcar rolled up the drive. Oberst Walter Nicolai stepped out, sharp as a blade in his feldgrau uniform. He moved like a man who measured time in results.
Koba met him at the steps.
"Oberst," he said.
"Herr Koba," Nicolai replied, his eyes scanning the grounds — the trenches, the guards, the precision of it all. "Impressive."
They walked the estate together. Nicolai inspected the drills, the barracks, the kitchens. Everything ran like clockwork.
"You've built a fine machine," he said at last, standing with Koba on the veranda. "Loyal men. High discipline. Excellent order. But a machine, Herr Koba, is nothing without purpose."
He lit a cigarette, his tone cooling. "The General Staff has indulged this project for nearly a year. They grow impatient. They don't want theories. They want results."
The words landed like a blade between them.
Koba felt the calm descend — the quiet, deadly focus that came when Jake Vance disappeared and only Koba remained. He had been waiting for this question.
He looked Nicolai in the eye and smiled — slow, controlled, certain.
"Good," he said. "Because I'm ready to give you one."