In front of the permanent inspection post, a Soviet soldier wearing a cold-proof velvet hat and carrying a "** sand" submachine gun on his shoulder raised his right hand high: "Stop!" ”

The old truck came to a halt with a creaking screech, and the engine rumbled and coughed like an old man with uncomfortable lungs, and it was rubbish compared to the Maserati engine.

Lynn and Franz sat quietly in the carriage, listening to the driving Pate negotiate with each other in pure and fluent Russian, and vaguely heard the other party asking about the goods in the car and the destination of the trip, and Pate should have shown them a printed delivery note - not a forgery, but a form with printed lines and names that looked more formal than a purely handwritten one.

After a while, the Soviet sentry turned to the back of the car, and Lynn and the others deliberately did not hang a tarpaulin curtain at the back of the car, so they stood there and had a clear view of the situation in the car. The Soviet sentry looked at it for a moment, then stared at Lynn and Franz, and saw that both of them had calm and simple expressions, so he waved his hand at the sentry and shouted, "Release!" ”

This "release" eased Lynn's slightly nervous state of mind, and if there were no accidents, this would be the last permanent checkpoint before leaving Leningrad, and then they would be able to reach the predetermined location near the Finnish border relatively smoothly as long as they avoided the main traffic road and made a detour on the pre-surveyed country road.

The old engine did not break down at this time, and when the sentry pole was raised, the truck staggered forward, and the concrete construction of the guard box and the low house next to it soon fell behind. After walking away, Lynn vaguely saw four or five sentries coming out of the house where they were stationed, and together with several sentries who had been on duty, they moved the wooden barbed wire fence that had been resting in the grass to the intersection. Judging from this situation, they must have received orders from their superiors to be on strict guard. If the order had been given a few minutes earlier, or if the truck had been delayed on the road for a while, it would have been difficult to say whether it would have been so smooth to pass through the checkpoint now.

"Heaven forbid!"

Lynn made a Christian cross on his forehead and chest, a habit he left behind on the battlefields of the Eastern Front. Time travel and accidents, all this seems to be explained by divine will, but Lynn did not convert to a certain religion, he still believes in himself - objective factors do not need to be forced, only need to give full play to his own subjective initiative, victory or defeat is destiny.

Franz was obviously a Christian, and when he saw Lynn do so, he immediately followed suit, and the words were in his mouth.

"Come with us! Get out of Russia! Lynn said in a voice that only the two of them could hear, "Go to a place you wouldn't even think about." ”

Undenied this, Franz replied: "As long as the chief thinks that I can still realize the value I have left Russia, I will not hesitate!" ”

Looking at the Soviet army checkpost in the rear that gradually disappeared from sight, Lynn said calmly: "You are a born soldier, suitable for a real military staff officer, as a spy...... What a waste of your talent! Of course, I believe that these two years of espionage will be very helpful for your flexible thinking and judgment. Don't look at the current state of secrecy and hiding in the empire, but in the near future, we will finally return to the regular line of the country, rebuild our economy, industry and army, and military talent will still be an important pillar! ”

"It's great to hear you say that!" "You may understand, but I've always been worried that all my efforts are useless struggles, because a small group of people can't pull the sinking 10,000-ton ship back to the surface." ”

"That's a wonderful analogy."

Saying that, Lynn sighed very lightly, although the Führer and Rommel were still surprisingly alive, although the "Vault" base gathered a group of elite talents from the army and scientific research, and although the lost empire still had amazing wealth, what they did in the more than half a year after the end of the war was not exactly to do their best to pull the sunken giant ship back to the surface?

Franz may have been less able to read words, but he did not notice Lynn's vicissitudes of life, but looked forward: "My hometown is in beautiful and peaceful Bavaria, which suffered the least damage during the war, and I heard that the Allies adopted a softer policy after the occupation there, and I really hope that one day I can stand in front of my family again, and I am wearing a very handsome imperial uniform." To tell you the truth, I have been reluctant to return to Germany during this time, because I don't want to return to my hometown in the guise of a down-and-out wanderer. ”

Franz himself laughed as he said this. Between dignity and family, the latter should be the choice that most people tend to choose, and Lynn is no different. At this time, he suddenly missed Dinah in Sweden and his unborn child. The Empire's intelligence organization carried out a bombing attack in Stockholm as scheduled, thus interfering with the realization of the allies, creating suspense and contradictions between the United States and the Soviet Union and other countries, and it is not known whether Andriy sent Dinah and her sisters to a safer place. After all, in the event of such a sensational incident, the Swedish police and military will inevitably be on increased alert in the capital, and the occupants of foreign passports may be under scrutiny and investigation, and thanks to the efforts of the Imperial intelligence officers stationed everywhere, the passports held by the ladies are issued by the authorities, not counterfeited forgeries, but they are not professional spies after all, and cannot withstand strict interrogation.

Lynn didn't speak, and after a while, Franz asked softly, "Sir, what I can't think of, sir...... Is it under the ice in Antarctica? ”

Another poor child misled by propaganda, Lynn admires the masterminds of the "Aryan Ark Project" even more, not only secretly transporting many people and equipment to the "Vault", but also resorting to such a trick to cover people's ears. I remember that when I talked to the technical experts of the disc project in the secret laboratory above the upper hangar, I heard from them that a disc was transported to the South Pole by a submarine, presumably by remote control to let it move in the waters near the South Pole, deliberately allowing ships and planes to observe, so as to make this mysterious atmosphere more sufficient. When the U.S. Navy gathered a large number of ships and personnel to rush to the Antarctic waters, they were greeted only by the empty cold wind and endless glaciers -- at that time, there was no longer any need to use disc aircraft to frighten them, and in the harsh polar climate, all kinds of seemingly mysterious optical phenomena were enough to make American pilots make wrong judgments.

Nothing happened along the way, and Lynn asked curiously, "Why did you make such a guess?" ”

"We have been communicating on the Soviet side of the ships - only receiving signals and not sending them, so it is relatively safe. A Soviet ship once spotted strange flying machines in the Antarctic waters, and reminiscent of the fact that many people had seen similar objects on the battlefields of Europe, and they thought that the Reich Führer did not die, but fled to the Antarctic with the last elite troops! ”

Franz's speculation was basically the same as historical rumors, and Lynn asked him again: "What is the official reaction of the Soviet Union?" ”

Franz shook his head, "At least we didn't find anything out of the ordinary. ”

Even if the Soviet Union was really indifferent, Lynn felt that it did not mean that Lao Maozi was very pragmatic on this issue. Thinking about it from another angle, the Soviet Union dismantled and repatriated the industrial equipment looted from the occupied areas at an astonishing speed after the end of the European war, and also obtained one-fifth of the machinery and equipment from the occupied areas of the Western Allies according to the Potsdam Agreement, which made up for their war losses to a certain extent, and also made Germany a wasteland today. Perhaps in their eyes, whether Hitler was alive or not, and even if he were able to return to Germany, he would be left with a mess even worse than at the end of the First World War, and it is hard to imagine that he would be able to lead a group of people who had lost faith to rise again. Moreover, the Soviet Union's current naval power was too weak to be sufficient for a laborious expedition to the distant Antarctic waters. This kind of thing was left to the British Empire, which was also oppressed by German attacks during the war, and the United States, which had an unprecedented status.

Lynn was so familiar with these analyses that it was not very interesting to ponder them, he thought about them for a while, and asked Franz: "You have been in the Soviet Union for so long, and you have spent the latter part of the war and the early period of peace, as far as your analysis is concerned...... If Stalin were to be killed by us, who would be most likely to succeed him as the supreme leader of the Soviet Union? ”

"Every regime should have a second or third person after the number one, but such a question was absolutely taboo in the Soviet Union, as if they thought Stalin would live for decades. Judging from the information we have obtained from listening to the radio for a long time, the prestige of the highly decorated marshals is even higher than that of the members of the Presidium, and if we do kill Stalin this time, I personally think that the most likely person will be the one who will get the support of the army to take the leadership position, and then in order to eliminate dissidents, there may be a great purge of the Soviet Union like the one in the thirties, and the national power will decline from prosperity to decline......"

At first, Franz said that there was some basis, but when he heard the last sentence, Lynn tapped him on the shoulder: "Young man, hope is good, but in military judgment, do not confuse hope with prediction." ”

Franz grinned: "Okay! If I were an ordinary Soviet civilian, I would support Zhukov as the leader, and I believe that he would be able to lead the country through the enemies of the West. ”

Zhukov can be called the brightest star of World War II, and the victory in the Great Patriotic War did make his glorious image deeply rooted in the minds of every Soviet people, but throughout the history of the Soviet Union that he knows, no leader is a real soldier, but Putin, the strongman who led Russia to stop the recovery after the collapse of the Soviet Union, is a legendary figure born as an agent, and many people even compare him with the tsar. In the USSR of this era, there was also a figure not to be underestimated from the intelligence services.

"What about Beria?" Lynn asked.

Franz shook his head fiercely: "I don't like this man, he is simply our natural enemy." ”

Lynn smiled, he saw Franz's simple side, which also meant that he was not a junior who had a deep city and needed to be extra wary of when interacting.

"Is it possible that he will take power?"

Franz's expression became serious: "Hmm...... Objectively speaking, he has an advantage over the other members of the armed forces because of the intelligence agency, which is second only to the military, but politics is really difficult to judge, at least not because I am not good at it. In addition to Beria, the secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, whose son married Stalin's daughter, and Malenkov, who was close to Beria, were also eligible for succession after the end of the European war. ”

"And what about Khrushchev?" Lynn tossed out the name from memory.

"Who?" Franz may not have heard it clearly, but he was unfamiliar with the name.

"Khrushchev." Lynn slowed down and said again.

Franz frowned slightly: "Sir, I really haven't heard of this name, and there is no similar pronunciation. ”

Lynn did not study the history of the Soviet Union in detail, but he was 100% sure that Khrushchev was the leader of the Soviet Union after Stalin, and that Stalin's original death should have been in the early fifties. After the victory in the Great Patriotic War, the Soviet leadership had a large number of well-known and prominent figures, how much skill should he have to be able to achieve a rocket-like climb and surpass many predecessors to become a leader?

"Who do you want to be the next leader of the USSR?" Franz asked in turn.

Lynn then replied with a series of descriptions: "A brave and tough man, strong enough in heart, to dare to argue with Britain and the United States, not to hesitate to threaten each other with force, and even dare to go to war." ”

Franz retorted: "But sir, Britain and the United States have the atomic bomb in their hands, and everyone says that as long as this unbalanced technology lasts for one day, the Soviet Union will not dare to go to war with the Western countries." ”

Lynn blinked disappreciatively: "The main thing I'm talking about is that you have to have such a tough attitude, and you may not really fight." ”

Franz thought for a moment: "I see what you mean!" ”

The beauty of communication lies in understanding, and Lynn nodded slightly. After nightfall, the temperature gets colder and colder. Franz took out two futons from the carriage, and although they had a strange smell mixed with sweat and musty, they kept out the cold, and Lynn was not picky. The dilapidated truck staggered on, and about an hour later, Pate, who was choking on the cold in the cab, switched places with Franz, who took his place. Compared with the inquisitive Franz, Pate is closer to a faithful executor, he never says a word or asks a word, and if he chooses a personal guard, such a person with a surname is more ideal. In order to keep warm, the two sat next to each other, quietly spending time, but neither of them fell asleep. Without speaking, all sorts of thoughts and pictures came to Lynn's mind: whether Comrade Stalin had gone to report his ideas to Marx-Lenin, whether the Soviet leadership was quietly changing power, who would be the lucky one who would be indirectly pushed onto the stage of history, and where should the fourth step that ultimately determine the fate of the empire be after the crucial three moves had been completed...... In the wee hours of the morning, the weather was freezing cold, and the truck, which was in the condition of an old scalper, delivered the truck cargo and three special missions to its destination without stopping -- the Cheka, more than 290 kilometers from Leningrad, a small village where the "Saul Contingent" had settled during the war. It doesn't matter that after the war, there were only seven families left here, and the number of inhabitants increased after the war, but the point was that there was a Finnish spy, a staunch fascist. Ideological loyalty would keep Russian partisans immobile in the face of torture by the enemy during wartime, and it would also allow a trained professional spy to remain in the middle of nowhere, living alone and destitute in the middle of nowhere. After withdrawing from the war in 1944, the Finnish government no longer received German aid, and their economic and financial difficulties led them to drastically reduce their military investment, and politically they had no choice but to succumb to the Soviet Union, which reversed the tide of the war, and even later even the country's number one hero, Field Marshal Mannerheim, had to go into exile. Nevertheless, the far-sighted people in Finland never gave up their efforts to defend the country's sovereignty, and after signing a secret treaty with the Third Reich, they insisted on leaving the elite spies stationed in the Soviet Union on the enemy's soil, but only let some informants with mediocre abilities who had not achieved anything for many years withdraw to Finland, so as to probe the military and political developments in the Soviet Union in a relatively proactive way, so as to prepare in advance in case of abnormal events.

Having never been to the village and had never met with Finnish spies, Lynn knocked on the door of the bridgehead house in the same way that the commander of Task Force Thor had left for herself. The man who opened the door was a lame middle-aged man, with a messy beard, dressed in coarse cloth, and although there was a stove in the room, the temperature was not much higher than outside.

Hearing Lynn say the correct code words, the middle-aged man hurriedly let the three of them into the house, did not turn on the lights, and whispered: "You stabbed the hornet's nest?" ”

"Yes." Lynn whispered in German, "The hornets will soon be pouring out, and the rest of our personnel are on their way to evacuation and need your help to cross the border to Finland." ”

I couldn't see the middle-aged man's expression in the darkness, but I vaguely saw him go to the stove and turn on the fire, and then listen to him ask in a vicissitudes of voice: "There are as many people as when you came?" ”

The atmosphere was full of excitement, and Lynn replied, "If it goes well...... Nothing more, no less. ”

The middle-aged man sat down and said, "Fortunately, such weather is neither conducive to the flight of airplanes, nor is it suitable for vehicles to travel in the field." At dawn I went to the border posts of the Soviets to find out the situation, and by the way, I exchanged the winter grain for some rubles with them. ”

Although he said this calmly, Lynn couldn't bear to ask, "Then what should you do yourself?" ”

The middle-aged man's answer was somewhat humorous: "Hibernation." ”

(To be continued)