Now that she had seen him up close, the certainty was complete. The general had the same voice, the same eyes, the same scar. Even the faint scent of his skin, which she had caught standing near him, was painfully familiar.
It was the same scent fixed in her memory from their last embrace before his final flight. But one question would not fit inside her overloaded mind: how could this have happened? Anna forced herself to think coldly and logically, just as she had been trained.
The first possibility was that this was a double, a man with an extraordinary resemblance to her husband. A freak coincidence. She went over every feature of Dmitry’s face and body she knew by heart.
The conclusion was obvious. A resemblance this exact was impossible. The scar sat in the same place. The gesture with the bridge of the nose had the same unconscious rhythm. Even the way he tilted his head slightly left when listening was the same.
The second, much uglier possibility was that Dmitry had survived the crash but been captured. From there the logic led to the worst conclusion: under pressure, he might have broken and gone over to the enemy. The thought that her hero might have become a traitor made her sick.
Had he really put on an enemy uniform and risen all the way to general? The idea turned her stomach. She bent over, hands on her knees, and stood that way for several seconds trying to steady herself.
That left a third possibility—the most unlikely of all. Dmitry had survived, remained loyal, and been inserted into the enemy structure as a deep-cover agent. The operation would have been so secret that even his wife could not be told.
Operations like that were hidden from everyone, even close family. But if that was true, why had he shown no sign of recognizing her? Why had his gaze slid over her as if she were no one at all? Or had he recognized her instantly and chosen to play indifference because that was the only safe move?
Those thoughts helped. Anna straightened up, took a handkerchief from her pocket, dried her face, and drew several deep breaths. She knew she had to go back inside and finish the evening. She could not afford a breakdown.
Her composure was not just about her own life. It protected the entire underground network. So she returned to the mansion and spent the rest of the reception moving as if through fog. She translated small talk, smiled when required, nodded politely, and did everything protocol demanded.
At the same time, she watched General von Riedel from the corner of her eye. He spoke easily with the officers, laughed at their jokes, and never looked her way again. When the endless evening finally ended and she was back on the dark street, her hands were still shaking.
Anna walked toward her room on autopilot. She barely noticed the cold, the calls of patrols, or the dark outlines of ruined buildings. One thought kept circling in her head.
Tomorrow at nine in the morning she would walk into his office and see him face to face. Then she would find out the truth. She needed to know whether this man was her husband—or an enemy who would have to be dealt with.
That night she did not sleep. She lay on the narrow bed in her cold room, staring at the ceiling. She replayed every detail of the evening, every word, every glance.
Her roommates were fast asleep. Helga, an older typist, snored softly across the room. Anna was grateful for the quiet. She needed to think.
She remembered Dmitry as he had been before the war. His laugh. His habit of whistling while shaving in the morning. His strong hands—gentle around her shoulders, steady on the controls of a plane.
She remembered their last meeting in December 1941, two days before his final mission. He had come home late, exhausted, but oddly calm. Usually after hard days he was tense, almost jumpy. That night he wasn’t.
He sat on the bed beside her, took her hand, and was quiet for a long time. Then he said, “Anya, if something happens to me, don’t believe everything they tell you officially. Not everything in this war is what it looks like.”
At the time she had taken it for fatigue, the kind of dark talk pilots sometimes slipped into before a dangerous mission. She had hugged him and told him he would come back, as he always did…
