The sedative felt like a small, cold stone in Pavel's pocket.
Every step he took down the corridor of the safe house, towards Sofia's room, was a step into a hell of his own making. The plush runner on the floor did nothing to soften the sound of his own damnation.
He found her sitting by the window, staring out at the gray, indifferent city. She had become a ghost in a silk dressing gown, haunting the edges of her own life.
There was a single, dead flower in a vase on her nightstand. Brown petals, a brittle stem. It was a perfect, silent summary of everything they had done to her.
She looked up as he entered, her eyes, once so bright and alive in that Parisian cafe, were now huge and shadowed in her pale face. They were filled with a fragile, desperate hope that was more painful to see than tears.
"Pavel?" she whispered, her voice a dry rustle of sound. "Is there news? Have you come to take me away from here?"
He felt the lie rise in his throat, thick and choking like bile. "Yes, Sofia. I have."
The relief that washed over her face was a physical blow. It was a look of pure, unadulterated trust, and it was the cruelest torture he had ever endured.
He walked over to the small table, his movements stiff and robotic. He held up the small, unlabeled vial Kato had given him.
"I have a tonic from a doctor," he said, the words feeling clumsy and alien in his mouth. "He said it will help calm your nerves for the journey ahead. It will help you sleep."
She didn't question it. Why would she? He was Pavel, the one with the kind eyes, the one who had looked so uncomfortable when he had blackmailed her into this life. He was the good one.
His hands shook as he uncorked the vial. He poured the clear, odorless liquid into a glass of water on the nightstand. The tiny splash it made was the loudest sound in the world.
He handed her the glass. She took it, her fingers brushing against his. Her skin was cold.
"Thank you, Pavel," she said, giving him a small, weak smile. "You are a good man."
The words were a judgment. A sentence.
She drank the water down without hesitation. He watched her, a silent, screaming witness to his own monstrous act. It was the worst betrayal of his life, worse than any lie, worse than any act of violence. It was a betrayal of a soul.
He took the empty glass from her hand and set it down.
"It will be over soon," he said, the words a hollow echo of a promise he was actively breaking.
She lay back on the pillows, a soft sigh escaping her lips. The drug was fast-acting, a gentle, insidious poison. Her eyes began to grow heavy, the focus blurring.
As the drug pulled her under, she reached out, her fingers weakly clutching his hand. Her mind was clouding over, but one fear remained, sharp and clear.
"The other one..." she slurred, her voice thick, her breathing slowing. "The hunter... Stern. He told me Koba wouldn't come for me."
Pavel's heart seized in his chest.
"He said Koba throws everyone away in the end... Is that what he does, Pavel? Does he throw everyone away?"
The question, whispered from the edge of oblivion, pierced through his soul. He had no answer for her. He was living proof of her words. He was Koba's man, throwing her away into a bottomless pit of forgetting.
He was a monster's loyal dog, doing the dirty work his masters were too clean to do themselves.
As Sofia's eyes finally drifted closed and her breathing settled into the deep, artificial rhythm of a drugged sleep, he was left with the terrible, echoing truth. The good man he thought he was—the disapproving conscience, the reluctant soldier—he was a fiction. He was dead.
This act had killed him.
He returned to Kato's office, his face a gray, emotionless mask. He felt nothing. The rage, the grief, the self-loathing—it had all burned away, leaving a vast, cold emptiness.
Kato was waiting for him, a folder open on her desk. She didn't ask if it was done. She didn't need to. She saw the answer in the void of his eyes.
"Good," she said, her tone crisp, all business. "Now that is handled, we have a new priority."
She closed the file and pushed another one across the desk towards him. "Oberst Nicolai has a task for us. He has been... generous. He expects results. There is a shipment of new, experimental British artillery shells arriving in a neutral port in Norway."
She looked at him, her commander, his queen. "He wants them."
Pavel took the file. His hand was perfectly steady. The man who would have argued, who would have recoiled at the thought of more violence, more theft, was gone.
He looked at Kato, but he didn't see a friend. He didn't see the woman he had once sworn to protect. He saw a part of the machine. A cold, efficient gear that had ground him down to nothing.
He gave her a quiet, chilling reply that signaled a fundamental, terrifying change within him. A death, and a rebirth.
"Of course, Comrade," he said, his voice a dead, hollow thing.
"Tell me who I have to kill."