Chapter 323: Chapter 323

The Kremlin clock tower struck nine when Molotov left Stalin's office.

The echo of Stalin's words.

Do it. But carefully still rang in his ears.

He stepped into the freezing Moscow night with a single thought.

If Germany truly intended to bleed Poland, he had to know.

Not from reports written by cautious diplomats or fearful NKVD men, but from voices inside Berlin itself.

In his office, with the lamps burning low, Molotov summoned his secretary and asked for a discreet list.

Not ambassadors they were too visible, too easily intercepted.

Instead, academics, trade officials, journalists men and women who drifted between embassies, universities, and cafés.

People who heard whispers but were too small to be noticed by the Gestapo's sharper knives.

When the secretary laid the list before him, Molotov tapped it with a thick finger.

"These," he said. "But no official channels. Let the embassy handle its own wine and receptions. I will handle the shadows."

Two days later, a coded message went to Berlin.

A minor trade representative Pavel Sorokin, a broad-shouldered man with an easy smile and a taste for German cigarettes received instructions.

He was to linger in the beer halls, to smile at professors and engineers, to drink with clerks who worked in ministries they barely understood.

When Sorokin read the note in his hotel room, he smirked. "So. Now I am a ghost."

Sorokin sat at a café near Unter den Linden, a cup of coffee cooling in front of him.

Across from him sat Doctor Weiss, a middle-aged academic from Leipzig with thinning hair and eyes that never stopped moving.

They spoke in German, though Sorokin's accent betrayed him.

"You ask much," Weiss muttered, lowering his voice. "You want to know about troop movements? About speeches not yet printed? This is dangerous."

Sorokin smiled. "And yet you are here."

Weiss's lips tightened. "Because I hate what my country is becoming. But hating is not the same as surviving."

Sorokin leaned in. "You are safe with me. Tell me what you've seen."

Weiss hesitated, then whispered, "The trains. Too many, too fast. Troops moving east, not west. Officers in Breslau talk openly of Poland of old borders, of revenge. They believe the Führer will not wait long. Czechoslovakia was just the beginning."

Sorokin's pulse quickened.

He kept his face calm. "And the people? Do they know?"

Weiss gave a bitter laugh. "The people? They cheer. Bread is cheaper, factories are busy, radios sing every night of greatness. They would cheer if he marched them into Hell, so long as the parades were grand enough."

Sorokin nodded slowly. "And what of the generals?"

Weiss's eyes darkened. "They no longer whisper dissent. They march with him now. Even those who doubted, like Beck, like Fritsch... they have been silenced, or… replaced."

The coffee was cold by the time they parted.

Sorokin walked back to his hotel under the shadow of swastika banners, his mind racing.

That night, he coded his report and sent it through a courier route that led back to Moscow.

Molotov read Sorokin's first report in silence, then passed it to Beria. Googlᴇ search novel{f}ire.net

The NKVD chief frowned.

"Too much hearsay," Beria muttered. "This Weiss could be a Gestapo trick. They feed Sorokin panic, and he feeds it to us."

Molotov's eyes flicked up. "And yet the details fit what we already know. Trains moving east. Officers speaking too freely. Even if Weiss lies, the trains do not."

Stalin, sitting nearby, puffed his pipe. "Continue. Two weeks. Let the whispers become a song."

Sorokin met another contact.

Frau Adler, a widow who worked as a typist in the Ministry of Propaganda.

They met under the pretense of language lessons her German for his Russian.

"You should not ask me these things," she whispered as they walked near the Spree, the sound of water covering their words. "Goebbels is everywhere. Even walls have ears."

"And yet you answer," Sorokin said softly.

She glanced around, then continued. "They prepare pamphlets. Not for Czechs anymore. For Poles. They speak of 'German brothers' in Poznań, in Danzig. They prepare photographs, films, stories of Polish brutality. Lies, but beautiful lies."

Sorokin asked, "When?"

She shook her head. "They do not tell typists when wars begin. But they tell us what words to write. And the words now are Poland."

Molotov read the second report with his usual calm, but his hands lingered on the pages longer than before.

He called for his adjutant.

"Send word to Stalin the pattern grows clearer. But I will not move until I have one more piece. One more voice."

Sorokin's third meeting was more dangerous. A young man, Heinrich, barely twenty-five, who worked as a clerk in the Wehrmacht's supply office.

His uncle had fought with the Communists in Spain.

Heinrich still carried the old man's bitterness.

They met in a dim tavern near Alexanderplatz. Sorokin ordered beer.

Heinrich drank quickly, eyes darting.

"They prepare," Heinrich whispered. "Supplies move east. Ammunition, rations, fuel. I see the lists. They are not for Czechoslovakia that is already finished. They are for Poland."

Sorokin asked carefully, "Do they speak of dates?"

Heinrich shook his head. "Not openly. But the officers say the Poles are stubborn. They say Hitler will show them his teeth soon. They say he will not wait another year."

Sorokin leaned closer. "And if war comes? Will you fight?"

Heinrich's eyes clouded. "I will file papers. But my brothers will fight. One is already in Silesia. He writes of new tanks fast, unstoppable. He believes no one can resist them."

That night, Sorokin's report was brief, almost cold.

Supplies east. Tanks in Silesia. Officers confident. Poland target.

Molotov sat in his office, reading the three reports laid out in order.

Weiss, Adler, Heinrich three voices, unconnected, yet all pointing in the same direction.

Stalin entered without knocking, pipe smoke preceding him. "Well?"

Molotov rose. "The whispers align. Troops move east. Propaganda shifts to Poland. Supplies follow. I believe the next blow will be against Warsaw."

Stalin said nothing for a moment, then asked, "And the West?"

"Silent," Molotov replied. "The French speak of caution. The British of peace. No one speaks of Poland. No one will move."

Stalin grunted. "So Hitler sharpens his knife, and the lambs doze."

Molotov chose his next words carefully. "Which means, Comrade Stalin, that we may choose whether to watch… or to dine."

Stalin's eyes glinted. "And you would dine."

Molotov inclined his head. "If the chance comes, yes."

Stalin paced slowly, hands behind his back. "Continue watching. Two more weeks. If Berlin shows its hand, then we will decide whether to shake it… or break it."

Sorokin wrote one final report before April came.

He had overheard a conversation in a café between two young officers.

They were drunk, careless.

"Poland is a rotten house," one had laughed. "One kick and the whole thing collapses."

Sorokin finished his beer, walked back to his room, and wrote the words down exactly as he heard them.

Molotov held the report in his hand.

He said nothing at first, just let the silence stretch.

Then he folded the paper and slipped it into his jacket.

"Now," he murmured to himself, "the conjecture begins to breathe."

The two weeks had passed. Molotov had gathered his whispers, his fragments, his fragile mosaic of Germany's intent.

None of it was proof.

All of it was dangerous.

But together, it pointed to one undeniable truth.

Hitler's eyes were turning east, toward Poland.

Now Molotov had to decide what to do with that truth and how to place it before Stalin without being devoured by it.