The night air of Berlin carried the faint perfume of spring blossoms, but Christian hardly noticed. His boots pressed softly against the cobblestones as he slipped beyond the Abwehr compound under cover of darkness.
He was not supposed to leave. The instructors made it clear: trainees were confined until their service began. But tonight, Christian's heart overruled discipline. He could not bear another day of silence, not with Kristina still here. The town slept fitfully. Shutters closed tight. Only the occasional lantern burned, swaying faintly in the breeze.
Christian's grey coat blended with the shadows as he crossed alleys he had known since boyhood. Every step felt like treachery and yet, the closer he drew to her street, the faster his pulse steadied.
He remembered the day they met as if it were carved into him. Two summers earlier, in 1937, his father had ordered him to fetch a delivery from a small bookstore on Wilhelmstrate. The shop smelled of dust and paper, and there, bent over a stack of novels, was Kristina.
She looked up with wary eyes, her hair tied back loosely, a smudge of ink on her fingers. "You're standing in the poetry section," she said softly, as if it were a secret. Christian had laughed then, nervous, clumsy. "I don't read poetry."
Her smile lingered. "Then you should start."
It had begun that simply with a conversation. Time after time, the conversations stretched into more conversations, and by the time they realized, they were speaking almost every day. Walks by the Fulda River, shared pastries in hidden cafés, letters traded when it became too dangerous to meet openly. By the time the Nuremberg Laws branded her an enemy of the Reich, Christian's heart was already hers.
Now, as he knocked gently against the back door of her family's narrow townhouse, the same nervous thrill from that first meeting returned. The door opened just enough for her face to appear. Her eyes widened, relief flooding them. "Christian," she whispered.
He slipped inside. The smell of old books still clung to the air, though the shelves were barer than he remembered. Her father had been forced to sell most of them. Kristina pressed her hands against his chest as if to be certain he was real. "You shouldn't be here. If they catch you…" "I had to see you," he said quickly. "We don't have much time."
They sat in the dim glow of a single oil lamp. Her fingers brushed against his as she spoke, her voice trembling with urgency. "Christian, you must come with us. Father has a friend in Paris. He can help us cross the border. If you stay here, the Reich will swallow you whole. You're training for them don't you see? You're being turned into one of them."
Her words cut sharper than any instructor's reprimand. "I can't leave," he said, forcing the words through clenched teeth. "If I vanish, they'll know. My family… they'll suffer for it. And if they discover I was with you…" Tears welled in her eyes, but she shook her head defiantly.
"And what of me, Christian? Of us? You speak of duty while they hunt me in the streets. If you loved me as I love you, you would run." He gripped her hands tighter, his own eyes burning. "I do love you. More than anything. But if I run now, I'm no good to you. They'd hunt us both. Listen, if you go to Paris, I'll find a way to keep in touch. Letters, couriers, whatever it takes. I swear it."
Kristina searched his face, her breath trembling. "Swear it, Christian. Not as a soldier. As the boy who once promised to read poetry with me." His throat tightened. He bent forward, pressing his forehead against hers. "I swear it. Wherever they send me, wherever you are, I will find you again."
For a moment, the war outside seemed to vanish. They kissed, desperate and unsteady, as though the world might collapse at any second. When they pulled apart, she whispered, "Go, before someone sees you. I'll be gone soon to Paris, I promise. Don't let them break you before we meet again."
Christian touched her face one last time, memorizing the softness of her skin, the light in her eyes. Then he turned, forcing himself back into the cold street. As he walked away, the cyanide capsule pressed against his ribs, and he wondered bitterly if that was what his promises were worth a pill of silence, in place of a future. But in the hollow quiet of Berlin, one truth rang louder than any oath to the Reich: he would never abandon Kristina, no matter how far the war carried him.