The war came like thunder.
On the morning of January 14, 1942, the city of Berlin awoke to sirens—not of warning, but of celebration.
The loudspeakers blared with the voice of Joseph Goebbels, triumphant and feverish:
"Today, the forces of the Reich have begun their righteous march to liberate the West from the tyranny of the Anglo-American plutocrats!"
Crowds filled the streets, waving flags, throwing flowers at convoys of soldiers. But Raed Khaled al-Masri didn't watch from the street. He was already underground—literally and metaphorically—sitting inside a dim communications room beneath the Reich Foreign Office.
The hum of machines filled the space. Typewriters clacked like a heartbeat. Radio operators barked codes.
Raed sat quietly at a corner desk, his face illuminated by the blue glow of a signal monitor. In front of him: intercepted messages from Allied reconnaissance planes over France. His job, officially, was to translate and report.
In truth, he was sifting for gold—anything that Moscow would kill to know.
Every keystroke he made was deliberate.
Every pause calculated.
He had memorized the faces of the men in the room. Most were tired bureaucrats. Two, however, wore black Gestapo insignia. Their eyes followed everyone.
One of them—a tall man with a scar across his jaw—approached Raed.
"Herr Masri," he said in clipped German, "your German is excellent. You learned it where?"
Raed smiled politely. "At the university in Damascus. Before the war."
"Ah. You studied linguistics?"
"Languages… and people."
The officer gave a short, humorless laugh and moved on.
Raed exhaled slowly, his pulse steady. He had survived another small test.
At noon, he stepped outside to breathe. The air was thick with smoke and gasoline. Across the street, tanks rolled past the Brandenburg Gate, their iron treads grinding over the cobblestones. Berlin was celebrating, but beneath the cheers, Raed could feel something else—a pressure, a weight, as if the city itself knew what awaited it.
He turned toward the Tiergarten, where he had met the mysterious woman two nights before. Her words echoed in his head:
"Forty-eight hours. Operation Sickle Wind."
That deadline ended tonight.
By dusk, Raed was back in his apartment, surrounded by half-burned candles and maps spread across his desk. He had decoded the cylinder she'd given him.
The instructions were simple, but deadly:
"Locate the communication hub controlling Hammerfall Western Command. Extract frequency keys and relay structure. Deliver to checkpoint 'Neptune' near Potsdam by 0300 hours."
He closed his eyes. This wasn't simple intelligence anymore. It was sabotage. If those keys reached the Soviets—or the Allies—Hitler's western offensive could collapse before it even reached Paris.
A soft knock startled him.
He reached for his pistol. "Who is it?"
"It's me."
The door opened, and the woman entered—still in uniform, snow melting on her coat. Her hair was loose this time, her face pale under the flickering candlelight.
"I didn't think I'd see you again," Raed said.
"Neither did I." She dropped a satchel on the table. "I have the access papers. We can get into the relay center, but only for ten minutes. After that, the night shift changes."
Raed looked at her closely. "You're risking too much."
"I stopped caring about risk when they executed my brother in Warsaw."
Silence. The only sound was the ticking of the wall clock.
Finally, Raed nodded. "Then we move."
The Reich Communications Hub was located in an old post office near the river Spree, a fortress of concrete and guards. The night was freezing. Raed and the woman—whose name he still didn't know—walked toward it dressed as SS staff, their forged papers tucked under their gloves.
The gate guards checked them briefly and waved them through. Inside, the air hummed with static and the whine of transmitters. Raed's heartbeat synced with the noise.
"Room 302," she whispered. "Frequency records are kept there."
They climbed the stairwell, boots echoing softly.
At the door, Raed pulled a lockpick from his sleeve—a habit from older missions in Istanbul and Cairo.
Within seconds, the lock clicked open.
Inside was a small control room, walls lined with radio panels and file drawers. The scent of ozone filled the air.
Raed moved quickly, searching through drawers. "Encrypted signals, field channels… there." He found a metal box labeled HAMMERFALL—PRIORITY KEYS.
He pulled out a stack of frequency charts and scribbled them into his notebook, his mind racing.
Suddenly, footsteps. Voices.
"They're early," she whispered, panic flashing in her eyes.
Raed froze. The door handle turned.
He grabbed her wrist and pulled her behind the generator. The door swung open—two officers entered, laughing, carrying folders.
"…command says the Western Front's collapsing already," one said. "Can you believe it? French partisans are cutting supply lines."
"Bah," the other grunted. "Rumors. Once the Luftwaffe bomb London again, they'll crawl back under their rock."
They set down their papers and left moments later. The door closed.
Raed exhaled. "That was close."
She smiled faintly. "You're too calm."
"I'm terrified," he said flatly, "just good at hiding it."
They copied the last of the codes, then slipped out into the night.
The checkpoint "Neptune" was near an abandoned rail station in Potsdam—an old Soviet dead drop repurposed for the new war.
Snow crunched under their boots as they approached the tracks.
A faint whistle echoed in the distance.
"That's the signal," she said.
A man appeared from the shadows—a courier wearing a long coat and a civilian cap. He looked at them sharply. "Password."
Raed answered automatically: "The wind from the east carries dust and truth."
The courier nodded. "Good. Give me the codes."
Raed hesitated. Something felt wrong. Too rehearsed. Too clean.
He caught a glint—metal—at the courier's belt. A Gestapo badge.
He didn't think. He shoved the woman aside and drew his pistol. The courier did the same, but Raed fired first. The shot cracked the silence.
The man fell, clutching his chest. But in the distance, lights flared. Engines roared.
"Ambush!" Raed shouted. "Run!"
Searchlights swept the tracks as black trucks skidded onto the platform. Armed men poured out, shouting in German.
Raed and the woman sprinted toward the woods. Bullets ripped through the snow around them.
"Keep going!" he yelled.
She stumbled, and Raed caught her arm, dragging her behind a stone wall. Her breathing was ragged.
"They knew," she gasped. "We've been sold out."
Raed's mind raced. Only a handful of people knew their plan. The Gestapo must've broken someone. Maybe one of the radio operators. Maybe even Moscow itself had been compromised.
Sirens wailed. Footsteps closed in.
He looked at her. "We can't both make it. Give me the papers."
She shook her head. "No. We finish this together."
"Listen," he said, gripping her shoulders. "If they catch us, they'll torture you for names. You can't let that happen. Take the south path. There's a sewer entrance under the bridge. Go!"
She hesitated, then kissed his cheek—a single, fleeting gesture. "Don't die here, Raed."
He smiled faintly. "Not tonight."
She ran. Raed turned and fired at the approaching soldiers, his shots echoing through the frozen night. Then he dove into the darkness, vanishing between ruined freight cars.
Hours later, he surfaced through a maintenance hatch near the river.
The city was quiet again, except for distant sirens and the crackle of radio broadcasts celebrating victory at the front.
Raed limped to a bench and sat, his coat torn, his pistol empty. The documents were gone—safe, hopefully, with her.
He stared at the black water and whispered, "So this is what victory feels like."
Behind him, footsteps approached.
He turned—another man stood there, older, with sharp eyes and a cigarette between his fingers.
"You made quite a mess tonight," the man said in Russian.
Raed froze. "Who are you?"
"Someone who still believes the war can be won by truth." The man tossed him a small envelope. "Orders from Moscow. You've been reassigned. Paris."
Raed stared at the letter. "And the woman?"
The man exhaled smoke. "Alive—for now. But if you care for her, forget her. You're not lovers. You're ghosts."
He turned to leave.
Raed looked back at the sleeping city, the smoke rising from its chimneys, the Reich's banners fluttering in the wind like bloodied wings.
He opened the envelope. Inside, a single sentence:
"The hammer falls—but the sickle must rise."
He laughed quietly. It was the laugh of a man who knew he would die one day soon, but not before playing his final card.
The war was far from over.
It had only just begun.