Major Klaus Richter stared down the unwavering muzzle of Pavel's submachine gun. A single, perfect bead of sweat traced a path down his temple, but his voice was tight with the arrogance of a man who still believed he held the power.
"You think you can just walk in here and take over?" he sneered, his lip curling. "My men are all over this city. They will be here in minutes. You are already dead."
Kato smiled. It was a cold, predatory expression that did not reach her hollow eyes.
"Your men?" she asked softly, her voice a purr that was more menacing than any shout. "You mean the two watchers you had at the train station? The ones who let us slip away while they were busy arresting a decoy?"
Richter's face paled slightly.
"Or perhaps," she continued, taking a slow step closer to his desk, "you mean the four-man kill team you have stationed at the docks, waiting for a ship that will never arrive?"
The color drained completely from his face. She knew his exact dispositions.
"Or maybe," she leaned forward, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper, "you mean your private asset? The one Oberst Nicolai doesn't know about? The little 'Watchmaker' in Stockholm who sends you coded market reports that are really intelligence on your rivals back in Berlin?"
She had just reached into his soul and pulled out his deepest, darkest secret. His entire house of cards, built on ambition and betrayal, collapsed in an instant.
Richter, his composure shattered, made a desperate, final move. His good hand darted under the desk, fumbling for a hidden alarm button. A silent plea for help.
He never made it.
Pavel moved in a silent, terrifying blur. There was no gunshot. Just a sharp, brutal crack of bone and cartilage. Pavel had leaned forward, grabbed Richter's arm, and slammed it down onto the edge of the heavy oak desk with the full force of his body. Richter's shoulder visibly dislocated.
A raw, piercing scream of pure agony was ripped from his throat, a sound that was half-shout, half-sob.
Pavel stepped back, his face as blank and impassive as before. He hadn't been angry. He hadn't been cruel. He had simply, efficiently, delivered a message.
"You still don't understand," Kato said, her voice laced with something that sounded almost like pity. "You are not in command here."
She walked over to a coded radio transceiver on a side table. With a practiced, effortless speed, she tapped out a short authorization sequence. A moment later, the machine chattered back, spitting out a short ribbon of paper.
She ripped the tape from the machine and threw it onto the desk in front of the groaning, weeping Major.
"That's from your own network," she said, her voice cold. "An intercept of Nicolai's standing orders for your mission. I accessed them an hour ago."
Richter stared at the coded message, his good hand trembling.
"If you were compromised," Kato translated for him, her voice merciless, "your team's orders were to disavow you and retreat. Nicolai wrote that you were 'an expendable asset.' You were not a commander, Major. You were bait. A loose end sent to die, just like me."
He stared at the paper. His arrogance, his ambition, his entire world—all of it crumbled to ash. He was a pawn, sacrificed by the king he had so desperately tried to serve. He slumped in his chair, the white-hot pain from his shoulder forgotten, replaced by the deeper, colder agony of total and complete betrayal.
"What do you want?" he whispered, his voice broken.
"Everything," Kato said simply.
For the next hour, she became a whirlwind of command. A queen seizing a new throne.
She used Richter's radio, his codes, his authority, to issue a stream of new orders to his men. The fugitives had been eliminated. The mission was a success. All teams were to stand down and await her further instructions.
She had him recite account numbers for operational funds, access codes for safe houses across Scandinavia, the names and weaknesses of his contacts. She wasn't asking. She was taking. She was peeling the skin from his operation and wearing it as her own.
Pavel stood guard by the door, a silent, terrifying angel of death, his mere presence ensuring the Major's full and immediate cooperation.
She was not a survivor anymore. She was a conqueror, building a new kingdom from the smoldering wreckage of her enemy's.
She had a network. She had money. She had a ghost army that answered only to her.
Now, she needed a way back into the war.
She looked at Richter, a broken, sweating man cradling his useless arm. "I need a legend," she said. "Papers. An official identity. Something that will let me walk straight into the heart of Petrograd without anyone looking twice."
Richter, now a terrified servant desperate to please his new master, began to stammer about a German Red Cross delegation, a perfect diplomatic cover that would be above suspicion.
Kato cut him off, her mind already ten steps ahead, the final piece of her plan clicking into place.
"A nurse," she said, the idea taking hold, its cold perfection appealing to her. "A German nurse, Sister Anna. Separated from her unit during the chaos of the Russian army's collapse on the Eastern front. A woman of mercy, trying to get to the German embassy in Petrograd."
She turned to Pavel, who had been watching her transformation with his usual unnerving stillness. "Find me a uniform," she commanded. "And burn these clothes."
Her eyes, reflected in the dark window of the study, were no longer those of Kato Svanidze, the passionate Georgian firebrand. They were the cold, calculating eyes of a ghost preparing to haunt the living, a predator cloaking herself in the guise of a lamb.
"From this moment on," she declared to the room, to her broken captive and her loyal monster, "my name is Sister Anna."
A small, chilling smile touched her lips.
"And I have come to heal the sick."