Koba stood before the great map of the Eastern Front. It dominated the wall of his office, a sprawling tapestry of pins, lines, and annotations that charted the flow of men and material from the Baltic to the Black Sea. It was a god's-eye view of the slaughter, and he was one of the few men in the world who knew how to read its entrails.
Oberst Walter Nicolai stood beside him, emanating an aura of crisp, controlled impatience. The tour of the Institute had been impressive, but Nicolai was a man who dealt in results, not potential.
"You promise a victory, Herr Koba," Nicolai said, his tone skeptical. He gestured dismissively at the map. "The front is a stalemate. A continental meat grinder fed by railroad timetables. What can your handful of agents and your propaganda leaflets possibly achieve that my own intelligence bureau, with its thousands of operatives, cannot?"
Koba ignored the challenge. His mind, Jake's mind, was elsewhere. It was drifting through the digital archives of the 21st century, accessing a memory not of a past he had lived, but of a future he had studied. He was seeing troop dispositions, casualty figures, and after-action reports written by men not yet born. He was remembering the judgment of history.
He raised his hand and tapped a specific sector on the map, a quiet stretch of the line in southern Poland. His finger rested between the towns of Gorlice and Tarnów.
"Here," Koba said, his voice calm, almost detached. "In the first week of May, your armies will achieve the greatest breakthrough of the war."
Nicolai's expression didn't change, but Koba saw a flicker of something in his eyes—a guarded interest. "Every corporal from Riga to Romania knows an offensive is coming somewhere. The buildup is impossible to hide."
"I know more than where," Koba retorted, turning from the map to face the Oberst. His voice dropped, taking on a conspiratorial intensity. "I know how it will succeed. And I know how to turn it from a victory into a catastrophe for the Russian Empire."
He began to speak. It was not an analysis; it was a recitation. He laid out the strategic masterpiece of the Gorlice-Tarnów Offensive with a terrifying, prophetic detail that made the hairs on Nicolai's arms stand on end.
"General von Mackensen's Eleventh Army will be the spearhead, secretly redeployed from the Western Front," Koba began, tracing the unit's path on the map. "They will be supported by the Austro-Hungarian Fourth Army. Their objective is the Russian Third Army, commanded by the Bulgarian émigré, Radko Dimitriev."
He tapped Dimitriev's name on a list of enemy commanders pinned to the map. "Dimitriev is brave, but vain. He has been begging the Stavka for reinforcements for weeks, and they have ignored him. He believes the main German thrust will come further north. He is wrong."
Nicolai remained silent, his skepticism warring with a dawning sense of shock. The level of detail was impossible. He knew of Mackensen's redeployment—it was one of the most closely guarded secrets of the General Staff. How could this man know?
"The key to the entire operation," Koba continued, his voice as cold and precise as a scalpel, "will be the artillery. A four-hour preparatory bombardment. Not the indiscriminate shelling the Russians are used to, but a coordinated, creeping barrage, overseen by specialists. A hurricane of steel. It will obliterate the Russian forward trenches, which are poorly constructed and have no deep dugouts."
He pointed to a pin marking the Russian Third Army's logistical hub. "And most importantly, the Russian artillery will be silent. Not because they are cowards, but because of a catastrophic failure in their supply chain. General Ivanov, the commander of the Southwestern Front, has diverted their shell shipments to prepare for his own pointless offensive in the Carpathians. Dimitriev's batteries will be limited to less than a dozen shells per gun. They will be annihilated before they can fire a meaningful shot in their own defense."
Jake's mind was a blur of historical data—he remembered reading a footnote in a biography of General Brusilov that mentioned this very blunder. To Nicolai, it was a piece of intelligence so specific and so vital that it could have come only from a source at the very highest level of the Russian command, or from the Devil himself.
"When the infantry assault begins on May 2nd," Koba concluded, "the Russian lines will not bend. They will shatter. The retreat will become a rout. And that, Oberst, is where my men come in."
He looked Nicolai in the eye. "Your armies will provide the hammer. My network will be the anvil. My agents are already in place, spreading the propaganda we spoke of, but they have new orders. When the line breaks, they will cut telegraph wires. They will spread rumors that officers are fleeing. They will organize mass surrenders. We will turn a military retreat into a psychological collapse. We will deliver not just miles of territory, but tens of thousands of prisoners who will clog your camps and spread the gospel of defeat. It will be the victory you need, and the entire world will know it was decisive."
The room was silent save for the ticking of a clock on the mantelpiece. Nicolai stared at Koba, his analytical mind struggling to process the impossible. This was not a plan. It was a script for the future. He felt a profound sense of unease, the feeling of a master chess player realizing he is playing against an opponent who can see every move before it is made.
Koba let the silence hang in the air before he moved in for the kill. He had presented the miracle. Now, he would name his price.
"I do not want money for this, Oberst," he said quietly. "My loyalty is not for sale." A lie, but a necessary one. "I do not want medals or recognition. I want a tool. I want a man."
He walked to his desk and slid a thin dossier across the polished wood. It contained the profile of a single prisoner of war. Nicolai picked it up.
"Vladimir Ipatieff," he read aloud. "Russian. Chemist. Age forty-seven."
"He is more than a chemist," Koba corrected him. "He is a genius. A pioneer in the field of high-pressure catalytic reactions. He is one of the fathers of modern petrochemistry. He is currently sitting in a POW camp near Neu-Sandez, wasting his intellect counting lice."
Nicolai looked up, his eyes narrowed. He was beginning to understand.
"When your offensive shatters the Russian lines," Koba explained, "that entire sector will be thrown into chaos. The camp where he is being held will be overrun. In the confusion, a man could easily disappear. I want him. Delivered here. To me."
The implication was clear. A man like Ipatieff, working under Koba's direction, with the resources of the German state, could develop new explosives, more efficient methods for producing synthetic nitrates for gunpowder, perhaps even poison gas. He was not asking for a man; he was asking for a key that could unlock a whole new arsenal of industrial warfare.
Nicolai closed the dossier, his decision made. The potential reward vastly outweighed the risk. To have this warlock on his side, to harness this unnatural foresight, was an asset beyond price.
"The intelligence you have provided is… extraordinary," Nicolai said slowly, his voice laced with a new, deep-seated respect that bordered on fear. "If even half of what you predict comes to pass, you will have your scientist."
He stood up, preparing to leave. He paused at the door, turning back to Koba. A thin, cruel smile played on his lips.
"However, such a delicate operation cannot be entrusted to a standard army unit during a chaotic breakthrough. They are too clumsy. You require precision. A surgeon's touch."
He let the words hang in the air for a beat.
"Therefore, you will lead the extraction team yourself, Herr Koba. You and your own men. You will go into the heart of the chaos you are helping to create, and you will retrieve your prize. Consider it a field test for your fine machine."
The command settled in the quiet room. Koba felt a jolt, a flicker of Jake's primal fear. He had just set the world on fire from the safety of his office. Now, he was being ordered to walk into the flames. He had engineered a grand, historical victory and secured a priceless building block for his future kingdom. But the price was suddenly, terrifyingly personal. He had to leave the devil's workshop and step onto the blood-soaked stage of the deadliest battlefield in human history.