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Chapter 2 - The Spy

London, 1942.

The war room smelled of smoke and sweat.Telephones rang without pause. The air buzzed with static from the radio operators trying — and failing — to raise contact with the bomber group.

"Eagle Squadron, do you read? Repeat, do you read?!"Only static replied.

Colonel Harold Whitmore slammed his fist on the table. "That's forty planes gone dark!"

Across the room, analysts hovered over maps littered with pins and strings. The red line leading from Dover to Berlin now ended in nothing — silence.

"Interference?" asked Air Marshal Dowding, trying to keep his voice calm.

"No, sir," said the young lieutenant at the communications post. "They reached German airspace… then vanished from radar. No distress signals. No debris."

"Bloody nonsense," Whitmore growled. "A mechanical failure wouldn't take down forty aircraft at once."

The door opened behind them.The room snapped to attention as Prime Minister Winston Churchill entered, cigar in hand, eyes dark as thunder.

He said nothing at first — just looked around, listening to the faint crackle of static still playing through the radio.

"Well?" he finally said. "Where are my boys?"

Dowding cleared his throat. "Sir… the entire bomber division went silent. No communication. No visual confirmation of impact. Nothing."

Churchill's brow furrowed. "Weather?"

"Clear skies, sir."

He drew slowly on his cigar. The silence stretched.

Then, softly: "Then they didn't fall by chance. They were taken."

Hours later, fragments of debris began washing up along the North Sea.Wings charred to ash. Pieces of fuselage twisted and melted as if by fire hotter than any fuel.

A young intelligence officer, Captain Miles Avery, stared at the photographs laid out on the table.

"These came from Dutch fishermen," he said. "They said the sky lit up like fireworks. Said it wasn't flak… it came from above."

Dowding frowned. "From the heavens, then?"

Avery hesitated. "One of the surviving reports — we intercepted a partial transmission before the channel went dead." He slid over a notepad with a scribbled transcription.

It read:

"Red light— sky's on fire— it's a man— God help us—"

Whitmore scoffed. "A man? Ridiculous."

But no one laughed.

Rain lashed the windows as Churchill poured himself a drink.Dowding and Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden stood across from him, pale and speechless.

"So," Churchill said, swirling the glass in his hand, "the Germans have found a way to shoot down an entire fleet without firing a shell."

"Or they've made something that can," Eden said grimly.

Churchill's eyes narrowed. "You're suggesting a weapon."

"Not a weapon, sir," Dowding said quietly. "A man."

Churchill set down the glass. "Explain."

Dowding sighed. "Every report — what little we have — describes the same thing. A flying figure, glowing eyes, movement faster than aircraft. No projectile traces, no ground fire. Whatever it was, it destroyed forty planes single-handedly."

Eden rubbed his temples. "If that's true…"

Churchill finished his sentence. "Then the balance of power just shifted."

He walked toward the window, staring out into the London rain. "If they've made something like that… something that flies… bleeds… thinks…"

He turned back to them. "What kind of dark magic experiments are the nazis willing to do to win this war?"

The next morning, the Cabinet War Room was filled with the sound of typewriters and distant thunder.A black-and-white film reel projected onto the wall — footage smuggled from Swedish airspace showing explosions over Berlin.

"Each detonation is consistent with aircraft rupturing midair," said Captain Avery. "But there's something else — look here."

He slowed the reel. In the blurred smoke, for a single frame, a silhouette appeared — a man-shaped figure hovering among the flames.

The room went silent.

Whitmore muttered, "Good God…"

Eden turned to Churchill. "Do we inform the Americans?"

Churchill puffed his cigar, eyes fixed on the frozen image. "Not yet. If this creature exists, I want to know what it is before Roosevelt does."

He leaned forward, voice low and measured. "We'll call it The German Phantom. Until we know more."

Berlin, 1942.

The sky above Berlin burned gold that morning.Flags draped every building. Crowds flooded the streets, waving swastikas and throwing flowers into the air. Music blared from loudspeakers, and the air was thick with smoke, perfume, and pride.

In the center of it all stood The Great German.

He walked through the marble gates of the Chancellery courtyard surrounded by SS guards who looked more like acolytes than soldiers. His uniform was immaculate — black with gold insignia — and a crimson cape fluttered behind him in the wind. The sun caught the faint sheen of his skin, still warm with the strange inner heat that never left him.

When he stepped onto the balcony beside Hitler, the crowd erupted.Tens of thousands of voices roared his name.

"Der Große Deutsche! Der Große Deutsche!"

He didn't smile. His face remained calm, composed — a statue come to life.To the people, his silence was strength. To the men beside him, it was obedience.

That night they held a party n his name.

The grand hall glittered like a cathedral of excess.Crystal chandeliers bathed the marble in golden light, and long crimson banners draped the walls — the swastika looming over every table like a watchful god.

A full orchestra played triumphal marches, their brass notes echoing against the vaulted ceiling.

Silver trays carried roasted boar, black bread, sugared pastries, and tall glasses of champagne. Officers in dress uniforms staggered between laughter and drunken song, medals clinking as they toasted to the "new dawn."

At the head of the hall, under a massive imperial eagle carved into stone, stood The Great German.

He was a vision carved out of the Reich's dreams — tall, broad-shouldered, and impossibly symmetrical.

His hair, a precise golden blond, was combed back neatly, glinting under the chandelier light like strands of polished copper.

His eyes, cold and blue as frozen steel, surveyed the room with quiet detachment.His uniform was an immaculate black, trimmed with gold embroidery on the cuffs and collar, the fabric fitted to perfection across his athletic frame.

Across his chest, medals and crosses gleamed — the Iron Cross at his throat, the German Star on his breast, and a crimson sash slung diagonally across his torso.

A red cape, lined with gold, cascaded down his shoulders — regal, heavy, and symbolic, the fabric flowing just above his polished black boots.

He looked every inch the god Hitler promised his people — a man above men, untouchable, immaculate, unreal.

And yet, behind that stoic expression, something human flickered — discomfort, or perhaps the faint ache of self-awareness.

Champagne bottles popped like gunfire.Officers shouted over the music, arguing about the exact number of British bombers he had downed.Some said forty. Others swore it was fifty. One insisted a hundred.

Each retelling grew taller, louder, and less believable — but no one dared question it.

A drunk colonel stumbled to his feet, raising his glass."To our savior!" he slurred. "The man who burned the British from the heavens! To the Great German!"

The crowd erupted in cheers.

Falken raised his glass politely but didn't drink. He never did.The champagne fizzed untouched in the crystal flute as he scanned the sea of flushed faces and empty boasts.

Across the room, Kraus leaned against a pillar, nursing a cigarette. He caught Falken's eye and gave the faintest nod — not of pride, but of understanding.

The orchestra shifted to a slower waltz. Women in silk gowns — secretaries, officers' wives, and propaganda actresses — glided across the floor, laughing as generals pulled them close.

Falken stood alone, a statue among revelers.

Near midnight, the double doors opened.The room fell silent as Hitler entered, flanked by Goebbels and Himmler.

He walked directly to Falken. The music ceased. Every officer stood.

"My son," Hitler said warmly, placing a hand on his shoulder. "You've done what no army could. The people sing your name. Even the stars seem to bow before you."

Falken bowed slightly. "I only serve Germany, mein Führer."

"Of course," Hitler smiled, "but Germany serves destiny — and destiny now has a face."

He raised his voice, addressing the crowd:"Tonight, we stand in the presence of a miracle! Proof that divine favor blesses the Reich!"

Applause thundered through the hall.Goebbels clapped so hard his palms turned red. The orchestra resumed — louder, faster, triumphant.

As the celebration continued, Hitler leaned close, voice low."Enjoy tonight, Otto. Tomorrow, we begin the true test."

Falken looked at him, confused. "Test?"

Hitler's smile sharpened. "You will fly east. There are whispers that the Soviets seek to mimic our success. I want them silenced."

Falken hesitated. "Do you believe they can replicate it?"

"Perhaps," Hitler said softly. "But if they can, it means God's gift is not ours alone — and that cannot be tolerated."

He straightened, patting Falken's arm like a proud father."Tomorrow, the world will see there is only one chosen race."

By dawn, the banquet was a graveyard of broken glasses and spilled wine.The orchestra had long since stopped playing. Officers lay slumped over tables, boots up, faces red from alcohol and pride.

Only a few remained awake — Kraus among them.He watched Falken standing by the window, cape draped over his shoulders, the first pale light of morning spilling across his golden hair.

"You didn't touch a drop," Kraus said quietly.

Falken didn't turn. "I don't feel hunger. Or thirst. Not anymore."

Kraus nodded slowly, exhaling smoke. "You should still pretend to. It makes them comfortable."

Falken glanced over his shoulder. "Do you think I'm human, Wilhelm?"

Kraus hesitated, then said the only thing that seemed true."I think you were."

Falken looked out at the sunrise."The Führer wants me to destroy a Soviet base," he said softly. "He called it a test."

Kraus ground his cigarette under his heel. "Everything's a test to him."

Falken's eyes glowed faintly in the light. "Then I'll pass it."

Palestine (British Mandate), 03:12 — 09:07, 1942

03:12

The radio operator's voice came through the small command tent in clipped German: "Position reached. Visual on target. Awaiting further orders."

Hitler's words were spoken in the Chancellery three hours earlier and repeated now like an invocation. He had leaned forward over the map, eyes glittering. "Make them an example," he had said. "Make every city remember what it means to challenge us."

Leutnant Otto Falken listened to the order with the same detached calm he wore for everything, and when the command came he rose, mounted into the night, and left the earth behind like a stone freeing itself from a sling.

Below, the region was waking. Markets and bakeries, madrassas and children's bedrooms — life that had little knowledge of the war's newest terror — still turned toward dawn.

04:03

A farmer named Ibrahim Rifai was standing outside his home, rubbing sleep from his eyes, when the first light came — not the pale gold of sunrise but a serried flash that washed the horizon in impossible color. He squinted up and saw a silhouette moving contrary to the wind, a shape that should not have been possible: a man gliding, a black cape catching the cold air, eyes like embers.

At first Ibrahim thought of saints and devils the way men think of thunder; then the sound came — a tearing roar as buildings began to fail the way a pane of glass fails under a thrown stone. Fires blossomed where there had been houses. Concrete and timber folded; whole blocks vanished into smoke and ash.

He ran toward the fields, hands out, calling for his family, but the noise swallowed speech.

05:20 — Tel Aviv

In the port city, fishermen watched the sky from the breakwater. They were the first to radio the authorities: "Something above — it is burning the sea — the air is full of light." The reply came back: "Remain calm. Await instructions."

There were no instructions that could prepare anyone.

The Great German moved through the city faster than sound itself, a comet with a human face. He did not shout. He did not hesitate. Buildings that housed families, grain stores, hospitals — structures designed to keep life — failed as if some invisible architect had decided they were no longer necessary. Fires sprinted through streets. Bridges and rails collapsed. The port's cranes crumpled.

Those who could fled inland, stumbling through alleys in the dark, some with only a blanket and a child. Those who could not were taken in the noonlike glare that followed — not described in detail, but counted in the impossible column of numbers that would later be read in every government ledger.

He flew through building like of the were paper faster than the speed of sound. He would fly up until n one could see him and fly down with the speed of a meteor destroying everything again and again leaving craters all over. HE laserd everyting on his sight with his eyes. 

06:40 — Jerusalem

By dawn the holy city was a place of sirens and smoke. Refugees moved through lanes carrying whatever they could. Priests and rabbis moved from shelter to shelter, ringing alarm bells and pleading for calm. A field hospital tried to open and found its walls breached and its wards beyond saving.

British officers attempting to marshal a defense found that their weapons were useless when confronted with a force that moved as if the laws of physics had been unmade for an instant. Anti-air guns fired, tracers arcing into a dark sky; rounds passed through nothing. Planes scrambled but never reached the man who was already gone.

08:15 — The International Room

Across the sea in Cairo and in London, the first reports arrived in incomprehensible chunks: entire neighborhoods "obliterated," ports "destroyed," infrastructure " unusable." The numbers were raw and kept changing. The War Rooms of the British Empire filled with maps and frenzied men tracing lines that no longer meant what they used to mean.

Winston Churchill, in a worn coat, read the brief himself. He put the paper down and stared into the distance. His face, always hard, had become something harder still.

"This isn't merely conquest," he said to Eden and Dowding in the secret air of the conference room. "This is an instrument of annihilation. If the Germans have made a weapon that can strike like this, we must respond with everything we have. But how do you fight against a thing that crosses continents like a thought?"

09:07

By nine o'clock, the official tally was still being assembled, each number colder than the last: cities devastated, ports unusable, thousands killed, hundreds of thousands now homeless and uprooted. Communications with large swathes of territory were lost. People gathered in open fields, in caves, in the few places tall enough to feel safe. Aid could not yet reach them for the routes were broken.

In Berlin, the procession of men in fine uniforms called it salvation. In other parts of the world they called it atrocity. In all places it called forth a choice no government had wanted to make so soon: respond with force and risk retaliation; or keep faith that diplomacy and new alliances might blunt a force the Reich had set loose.

By mid-morning, every city in the holy land ceased to exist. The entire population gone. International radio called it "a calamity beyond measure." Berlin called it "cleansing the East." 

Berlin, London, New York, and across Europe — 24 hours after the Falling Sky

The radio repeats a single line — as if that one sentence could make the night less true."Der Große Deutsche has struck. The Führer's hand protects the Reich."

Across borders and languages the same images play: the Reich's staged footage of a caped figure above burning cities, newsreel montage edited to a triumphant march. Goebbels' voice, honeyed and relentless, declares providence made visible.

Miriam Rosenfeld sat on the floor by the small oven, her hands folded in her lap as her husband wrapped the last of their meager bread. Their son slept in the next room, oblivious to the murmurs beyond the door.

At the window, men in grey coats moved down the street with lists; a municipal truck idled with a poster pasted to its side — bold black type: Relocation for the Good of the State. The language was careful, bureaucratic: temporary transfers, quarantine, protective custody. The words were not meant to alarm; they were meant to submit.

Miriam's neighbor came and whispered through the thin wall: "They are collecting names today. They say it's for registration. They say it's for work." Her voice broke on the last phrase.

Miriam pressed her palm to the wood of the table and tried to breathe. It was not possible to understand what had happened yesterday and still hold breakfast inside her throat. All around the city, sympathetic hands were turning away, or folding in applause.

When the knock came at their door — when the list lay on the table and the officer asked them to come "for processing" — Miriam stood, small and hollow, and took her son's hand. She did not scream. She had no words that could change the order of the world. Outside, the streets sang the Führer's name.

In London, the BBC read dispatch after dispatch with a tone of disbelief that hardened slowly into fury. The footage from Berlin's stations was crude hero-worship: the same balcony, the same crowd, the same close-ups of the Great German as if he were a saint. The narrator's voice tried to break the spell.

Winston Churchill watched the feeds in 10 Downing Street the way a man watches a wound: measured and appalled. He rose and paced the room, then sat and wrote, then read aloud the words he would not yet broadcast beyond official channels.

"We must not let the world accept their miracle," he told Eden and Dowding in low tones. "We must name this for what it is and make sure the world hears it. If the Reich will call massacre a miracle, we will call their miracle by its true name."

Across the Atlantic, the American papers screamed the headline: Germany's God-Machine. Protests bubbled in New York squares and neutral embassies demanded answers, but so much had happened so quickly that outrage outpaced action. Governments scrambled, telegrams sped, and diplomats pleaded for evidence and allies.

Hitler worked the optics as a man tends a fire. He needed a story the people would swallow: a myth of cleansing and blessing. Footage of the bombing — tightly edited, shot from angles that hid the human cost — rolled through the Ministry. In the crowd, women wept and threw flowers. Soldiers saluted with fervor.

Himmler and Goebbels drafted the next phase: if one display of power could cow an entire region, then the show must be repeated and amplified. They called it The Purge of Impurity in private memos and framed it in public speech as "relocation for the safety of the Reich."

Orders slid down through the bureaucracy with chilling speed. Lists were drawn. Registration cards were printed. Trains were requisitioned. Men, women, and children were told they were being moved for their protection or for work assignments; in whispers some officials used the harsher term that now passed through the halls without shame: cleansing.

Kraus read the directives behind closed doors and felt a cold that had nothing to do with winter. He had been an instrument. He had become a hand that could not turn back. In the lab beside him, Adler refused to meet his gaze.

"Do you believe in this?" Adler asked once, voice thin in the tiled corridor.

Kraus did not answer at first. He thought of the night the sky had burned, of Falken hovering like an impossible thing, silent as judgment. "I followed orders," he said finally. "And now those orders have consequences."

Adler's hand trembled on the page of the file he clutched. "We made him," he said. "We gave them their god."

Across the continent the same quiet dread spread. Synagogues emptied as families were told to assemble, to bring identification, to be ready for transport. Rabbis and elders tried to counsel calm, to teach children how to hide prayers, to teach mothers how to fold small bundles of clothes. In Paris, in Warsaw, in Amsterdam, in small towns where everyone had once known each other's bread, men carried the lists and tucked them under coats as if they could be weight.

There were no public trials of policy; there was only a cascade of administrative compliance: gates closed, routes set, stations filled with numbered carriages. Ordinary clerks signed papers and brought form after form to be rubber-stamped, hands that had once counted rations now counted names.

A resistance cell in Kraków met in a cellar that smelled of wet wood and rosemary. Men who had once been teachers and bakers argued in whispers about sabotage and safe houses. "We must smuggle children out," one woman insisted. "We must send word to the ports." They had no illusions about the scale of the problem. They had only the next hour and the refusal to be entirely silent.

International reaction hardened into two tracks. Publicly, neutral nations denounced what they saw on film and in dispatches; privately, embassies prepared evacuation lists, humanitarian relief, and refugee corridors. The British sent diplomats to pressure colonial administrations to open borders. The Americans readied cargo for relief that might never arrive.

In back rooms and through secret channels the Allies began to talk about methods that would once have been unthinkable: targeted operations, sabotage of key nodes, and the consideration of weapons or programs that might level the field. The existence of one unstoppable actor changed the calculus: conventional war now had to be balanced with clandestine counters.

Meanwhile, the Reich's broadcasts amplified the myth. Across Europe, in towns with radios, people listened and many believed. Propaganda is a kind of weather; in some places it clears the mind and in others it fogs it. Men who had never lifted a hand to harm their neighbors applauded at parades. Others turned away or helped in secret.

In a few days the nazis had exterminated an entire race of people.

Berlin, 1942 — 23:47 Hours

Snow drifted through the broken glass skylights of the abandoned warehouse on the city's edge. A single light bulb hung from the ceiling, swaying gently in the draft, its weak glow pooling on a scarred wooden table.

Three figures waited in silence.Two wore long Soviet coats, their buttons unmarked, their expressions carved from stone.The third sat apart — thinner than before, his uniform too loose around the collar, the black SS insignia gleaming faintly in the light.

Alexei Morozov

Codename: KorundEmbedded Agent — Berlin Section 4

He looked every inch the loyal Nazi officer: blond hair slicked back, posture precise, voice clipped. But when Colonel Viktor Zaitsev dismissed the guards and switched from German to Russian, something inside Alexei cracked.

"Comrade Morozov," the colonel said, voice measured. "Report."

Alexei tried to speak, but nothing came. His hands trembled on the table. His lips parted, then closed again.

"Comrade," Zaitsev repeated. "The report."

Alexei inhaled sharply through his nose and forced the words out. "They believe it. All of them. Every officer, every soldier, every civilian. They think he's—" His voice broke. "They think he's a god."

He looked up, eyes wild. "And maybe he is."

The colonel frowned. "Control yourself."

But Alexei couldn't stop now. The dam had broken.He stood, pacing, words spilling from him like water from a burst pipe.

"I can't live like this anymore," he said. "Do you understand what it's like to wake up every morning as them? To sing their songs? To drink with them, laugh with them, shake hands with murderers until your hands forget what clean feels like?"

He pressed his fists to his temples. "I salute their flag, I pray to their Führer, I wear their skin like it's my own — and every day I tell myself it's for Russia, for the mission, for something that matters. But I don't know if I believe that anymore."

Zaitsev stayed silent, eyes narrow.

Alexei's voice dropped to a whisper. "I don't even know who I am. I don't know what's real anymore. I tell myself stories so I don't forget — my mother's hands, my sister's laughter — but every year, the stories fade. I don't remember their faces. I can't remember the color of my own home. Sometimes I think… maybe I never had one."

He laughed softly, brokenly. "Do you know what it's like to live so long inside a lie that the truth starts feeling foreign? To hear your own name and not recognize it?"

He turned to face the colonel, eyes red and wet. "I see their parades, Viktor. I hear their music. And sometimes… I feel proud. Proud of them. Of us. Then I remember that I'm supposed to hate them. I'm supposed to be your man. But I don't even know which side I'm on anymore."

Zaitsev poured vodka into a tin cup and slid it across the table. "Sit down, Alexei."

Alexei didn't move. "Do you think Moscow even remembers me? Do they know what it's like here? How many people I've had to watch die pretending I didn't care? How many I've helped kill just to keep my cover?" He choked on a bitter laugh. "Sometimes I think I've become one of them. Sometimes I think I was never Russian at all."

Zaitsev's voice was cold steel. "You are Russian. And you are still useful."

Alexei froze, the words cutting through the madness. "Useful," he whispered. "That's all I am to anyone, isn't it?"

"Comrade," Zaitsev said, standing, "your pain honors no one. The State does not feel. The State remembers results."

He opened a folder and placed it on the table. Inside were photographs — blurry black-and-white stills of The Great German floating above a burning city, chemical readings, intercepted Reich transmissions, fragments of metal canisters marked with the word Projekt Morgenstern.

"Your next mission," Zaitsev said. "Find out how they made him."

Alexei blinked. "Made him?"

Zaitsev nodded. "Moscow doesn't believe in divine miracles. There is always a formula, a source, a process. We need to know what it is, and how it can be replicated."

He follows with "When this mission is done you can return home, your country is waiting for you."

Alexei with teary eyes says "Yes, sir."

When the door closed, the light flickered. Alexei stood alone in the cold, staring at the photos of the god he was ordered to dissect.

He whispered to himself, "I don't know if I'm a spy pretending to be a Nazi… or a Nazi pretending to be a spy."

Then he straightened his collar, wiped his face clean, and walked back into the Berlin night — back into the lie that had swallowed him whole.

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