Night slid over the captured command post like a curtain. The scarred Polish plain fell quiet; only a tired rumble of distant guns lingered. Inside the office, a pressure lantern hissed. Paper whispered. Shadows moved with the light.
Kato sat at the oak desk. Colonel Orlov's file lay open in front of her — a neat photograph of a handsome, confident man in a crisp uniform. He was the problem to be solved.
Revulsion had burned away. What remained was a clear, ruthless calculation. Koba had not only given her a vile task; he had issued a test. He wanted to break her — to see whether she would crack, rage, or beg. Refusal meant exile from the game: locked away as a sentimental relic, useful as a trophy but powerless. Escape was fantasy. The Germans would brand her Koba's; the Russians would brand her traitor; the Bolsheviks would brand her compromised. She was an island; Koba was the only shore.
So she changed the problem. If she could not refuse, she would learn to play the rules and win. She would make herself indispensable. He wanted a weapon — she would design it, calibrate it, and make sure it fired exactly as he intended.
Koba had given her access to the Party files as bait. She turned them into ammunition.
She worked through the night. No sleep. No food. She cross-referenced letters, reports, names. She mapped exile networks across Scandinavia and Paris. She traced bank accounts, lovers, old favors and debts. She read private pleas for help and brittle, vain boasts. She built a lattice of people and vulnerabilities, a catalog of how desire and desperation bent human choices.
By dawn the office was transformed. Stacks of paper were gone. Maps of Scandinavia were pinned to the wall. Colored thread linked cities to small cards with neat, precise notes. Kato sat at the center of it, pale and alert — a spider in her web.
Koba paused in the doorway, surprised. "You're awake," he said.
"I did not sleep," she answered. She gestured at the chair; he sat.
"I've completed the initial analysis," she said, in the flat tone of a briefing. "You asked for a woman who can get close to Colonel Orlov in Stockholm. I found twelve candidates. Eight are unusable." She pushed a thick folder toward him. "Too ideological, too unstable, or simply not his type. He favors classical, refined beauty."
Koba scanned the pages. The lists were clinical. The lives on them had been reduced to risks and assets. Exactly his method.
"That leaves four," she continued. She slid a smaller stack forward. "Complete psychological workups."
She flipped the top file. A photograph of a striking blonde stared up.
"Elena Petrova. Daughter of a factory owner. Zealous. Intelligent. But she'd lecture him. Convert him. She'd fail and blow the operation."
Next: "Maria Vyrubova. Former actress. Poise, deception skills. But she drinks. Volatile. Too risky."
Koba listened, a cold pride growing and something else — a thin unease. He had meant to crush her; instead she matched his cruelty.
Kato pushed one file to the center. "This one is perfect."
He looked. The portrait showed a young woman with dark hair, an alert face, cultured manners. "Sofia Morozova," Kato said. "Minor noble family from Tver. Disowned for revolutionary activity. Fled to Paris. Fluent in French, German. Plays piano. She has the polish to move among Orlov's circles."
Kato leaned forward. "She's also desperate. She lives in poverty. But she's proud. She won't sell herself for money alone." She slid a second, smaller photograph across the desk — a candid shot of a young cadet in uniform. "Her brother Dmitri. He's at Pavlovsk Military School. He's all she has left."
Her voice went cold. "That's our leverage. If we need absolute obedience, threaten the one thing she cannot bear to lose."
The silence that followed held the plan in place: the face, the motive, the lever. Kato had not only obeyed his order — she'd refined it into a weapon he hadn't imagined.
A slow smile arrived on Koba's face. This was not the broken woman he expected. This was something sharper, more useful. More dangerous.
Kato met his smile without flinching. One last line: "I've drafted the approach. Legend, funding, secure channels. The operation needs careful handling."
She had folded herself into his world — not as a victim, but as architect. He had asked her to load the gun. She had built the barrel, the sights, and the trigger.
She pushed the file closer. The photograph of Orlov looked up at them, untroubled. Outside, the plain slept uneasily. Inside, they had already begun to set the pieces in motion.