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. The man radiated the quiet impatience of someone who had no time for theories.
"You promise a victory, Herr Koba," Nicolai said. His voice was cool, clipped. "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 wasn't in the room. It was in another world — a digital age, a forgotten archive, a future burned into memory. He saw what history would call the Gorlice–Tarnów Offensive. He remembered maps, casualty counts, and postwar analyses written by generals who didn't yet exist.
He reached forward and tapped a spot on the map, his finger landing between two small Polish towns. "Here," he said simply. "In May, this will be the place. Your armies will achieve the greatest breakthrough of the war."
Nicolai's eyes flickered, just once. "Every soldier from Riga to the Carpathians knows an offensive is coming. That's hardly revelation."
Koba turned toward him, voice dropping to a calm, dangerous tone. "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 began to speak. Not guessing, not theorizing — reciting.
"General von Mackensen's Eleventh Army will lead the strike," Koba said, tracing a line across the map. "Transferred quietly from the Western Front. Reinforced by the Austro-Hungarian Fourth Army. Their target: the Russian Third Army under General Dimitriev."
He tapped the name pinned to the board. "Dimitriev is brave but vain. He's been begging for reinforcements for weeks. Stavka ignores him. He believes the attack will come north. He's wrong."
Nicolai stayed silent, but the muscles in his jaw tightened. The level of detail was impossible.
"The key is artillery," Koba went on. "Four hours. A creeping barrage — not random shelling, but a curtain of precision fire. It will erase their forward lines. Their trenches are shallow, no deep dugouts. They'll be buried alive before they can fire back."
He pointed to a small red mark — the Russian supply hub. "Their guns will stay silent. Ivanov has rerouted their shells to his Carpathian offensive. Dimitriev's batteries will have a dozen rounds per gun at most. They'll be destroyed before they can fight."
Nicolai's pulse quickened. This was more than intelligence. It was prophecy.
"When the infantry advances," Koba said, "the Russian lines won't bend. They'll collapse. The retreat will become panic. That's where I come in."
He looked Nicolai dead in the eye. "Your armies will strike the body. My men will break the mind. They're already in place, spreading the right kind of whispers. When the line shatters, they'll cut wires, spread rumors, organize surrenders. We'll turn defeat into disintegration. The prisoners will flood your camps — not as soldiers, but as carriers of contagion. They'll infect the rest with despair."
Silence settled over the room. The only sound was the clock ticking on the mantel. Nicolai stared at the map, at this man who spoke of future victories like he had already lived them. It felt like standing beside a magician whose trick you couldn't explain.
Finally, Koba broke the quiet. "I don't want payment," he said softly. "I want a man."
He opened a folder on his desk and slid it across. Nicolai picked it up.
"Vladimir Ipatieff," he read. "Russian chemist. Age forty-seven."
"He's more than a chemist," Koba said. "He's the future. High-pressure catalysis, industrial chemistry — a mind wasted in a prison camp near Neu-Sandez. When your offensive rolls through that sector, his camp will fall into chaos. In that confusion, he vanishes. I want him here."
Nicolai's eyes narrowed. He understood. A scientist like Ipatieff under German control could change everything — new explosives, synthetic nitrates, poison gas. Koba wasn't asking for a prisoner. He was asking for the key to reshape war itself.
Nicolai closed the folder slowly. "If even half your predictions are true," he said, "you'll have him."
He moved to the door, then stopped. "But such a recovery can't be left to ordinary soldiers. It will require precision." He looked back, his tone smooth but edged with command. "You will lead the extraction yourself, Herr Koba. You and your men. Consider it a test of your fine machine."
The words landed like a shot.
Koba stood still, the weight of the moment settling in. The strategist would have to become the soldier again. He had set the fire. Now he would have to walk into it.
He gave Nicolai a slow nod. "Understood."
When the door closed, he turned back to the map. The pins and lines stared back at him like eyes. The future he had summoned was moving toward him — loud, bright, and unstoppable.
And for the first time in years, Koba felt something close to fear.