Dmitry shook his head.
“Not yet. He doesn’t have facts. But he’s checking everyone, and sooner or later he’ll dig deeper.” He paused, then added, “We need to go quiet for a while.”
“No transmissions to headquarters for at least a few weeks. We need him to find nothing and lose momentum.” Anna understood the logic immediately.
But at that exact moment an urgent coded request came in from headquarters. Command desperately needed precise information on an upcoming enemy offensive. Without it, they could not prepare a proper defense.
Anna said, “I can’t go quiet now. Headquarters needs this. Lives depend on it.” Dmitry looked at her for a long moment.
Then he nodded reluctantly. “All right. But be more careful than you’ve ever been. Kranz likes traps.”
“I know his methods. He won’t stop at anything.” The trap Kranz set was simple and elegant, exactly the kind of thing a smart man would do. He planted false documents.
He left them in plain sight on the table in an empty conference room, as if he had forgotten them in haste. The papers concerned the transfer of an artillery regiment and looked completely authentic. Any hungry intelligence officer would have taken them. Anna did.
She realized her mistake only after she had already copied the key details onto a strip of thin paper. Something about it had felt too easy. Too convenient.
The documents had been left exactly where she would see them, at exactly the moment she happened to be alone. Once she understood, she destroyed the note that same night.
She burned it over a kerosene lamp, crushed the ash into dust, and dumped it into the stove. She did not go to Mikhail the next day. All contact with headquarters was suspended.
The very next day Kranz called her in again. This time the questioning lasted three hours. He asked about tiny details.
Where had she been the evening before? Whom had she spoken to in the hallway? What had she done in her free time?
Anna answered calmly because, in fact, she had nothing to hide. She had not taken the bait. She had not passed the false information on. She had not been caught in the act.
But she saw something new in Kranz’s eyes. It was no longer confidence. It was instinct. He could not catch her, but he could smell that something was wrong.
He was like a hunter who knows the animal is close but cannot yet see it through the brush. At the end of the interview he said softly, “You are a very interesting woman, Frau Müller. Remarkable self-control.”
Anna answered, “Thank you, sir.” He smiled thinly.
She knew it was not a compliment. It was a warning. She left his office and barely made it to the women’s washroom before she got sick from the strain.
Late that night Dmitry came to her room himself, breaking every rule they had. It was dangerous, but he knew there was no time to waste. The moment he came in, he said, “They arrested Mikhail this morning.”
Anna felt the floor drop out from under her. “When?” she asked. “Early,” Dmitry said. “Kranz had him picked up on suspicion of contact with local partisans.”
“For now it’s only suspicion. But if they break him under interrogation…” He did not finish. He didn’t need to.
Anna asked, “What do we do?” Dmitry answered in a hard, practical tone. “For now, nothing. Mikhail is experienced. He knows how to hold up under questioning.”
“But if they break him, we both leave the city immediately.” Anna looked at him closely. For the first time in the war, she saw real fear in his eyes.
Not fear for himself. Fear for her. “I’m not leaving without you,” she said. He shook his head.
“If it comes down to my life or the operation, you choose the operation. That’s an order.” Anna opened her mouth to argue, but he cut her off with a sharp motion of his hand.
“I mean it,” he said. “My position in this headquarters is worth more than my life. More than yours too.”
“We both knew what we were signing up for.” For the next three days they lived waiting for the knock on the door. Anna went to work, translated documents, smiled when required, and expected arrest at any moment…
