As the sun set, at the foot of High Castle Hill in Lviv, a three-wheeled motorcycle slowly pulled over to the side of the road.
Close behind it came a canvas-covered truck.
As soon as the vehicles stopped, a large number of soldiers wearing blue military caps and brown-green uniforms jumped down from the truck and quickly spread out along both sides of the street.
Viktor climbed off the motorcycle and looked toward the intersection not far away.
An abandoned tram stood motionless in the middle of the road, with hardly a single pane of glass left intact.
Curiously, right beside it, a traffic policeman in a black uniform with a white armband stubbornly remained at his post, staring blankly into the distance.
The soldiers who had accompanied Viktor to establish the roadblock were a rather mixed group.
More accurately, even their uniforms had been pieced together from different sources.
To make their identity clear to the German troops entering the city, everyone participating in the operation had to wear official military uniforms.
However, finding enough State Security uniforms in Lviv had not been an easy task.
Including Viktor himself and Sofia, who served as the interpreter, the entire detachment numbered fewer than twenty-eight people.
Their mission was to establish a roadblock here and negotiate with the German forces attempting to enter the city.
One should not assume this mission was safe simply because a treaty existed between the Soviet Union and Germany.
On the contrary, it was extremely dangerous.
Whether the mission succeeded or failed depended entirely on the German commander they encountered.
If he chose to honor the agreement, everything would proceed smoothly.
But if he did not, this force of fewer than thirty men would not survive even a single burst of machine-gun fire.
Perhaps the prospect of finally returning home had greatly lifted the spirits of the partisan fighters.
Their morale was high.
Under the command of a corporal, they began constructing the roadblock the moment they climbed down from the truck, seemingly unaware of the danger that might soon arrive.
Standing beside the motorcycle, Viktor lit a cigarette.
The slight tremor in his fingers betrayed the fact that he was nowhere near as calm as he appeared.
No one knew when the Germans would arrive, nor what would happen once they did.
Still, there was no turning back.
“Hey, Yura!” The first thing Sofia did after getting off the motorcycle was tug hard at the hem of her military jacket, which only made her full chest appear more prominent.
Resting one foot on the motorcycle’s rear wheel, she shouted to a soldier carrying wooden stakes not far away, “Go get that idiot out of here!
What we need is an anti-tank ditch, not someone directing traffic.”
“Yes, Comrade Sofia,” the soldier called Yura replied.
Setting down the stakes, he headed toward the bewildered traffic policeman with two other soldiers.
Viktor watched as the three men walked over and escorted the traffic policeman away.
He glanced at his watch.
It was already nearly six o’clock in the evening.
If the Germans did not enter the city today, the Soviet Army’s advance units should reach Lviv by this time tomorrow.
The commotion near the intersection grew louder and louder.
The traffic policeman, being dragged away, struggled like a madman, shouting at the top of his lungs and wrestling with the three soldiers at the edge of the square.
“What’s going on?” Viktor frowned and asked Sofia, unable to understand the man’s Polish.
“A nationalist who’s obsessed with the Polish government,” Sofia replied with a shrug.
“Forget it.
Leave him alone,” Viktor waved his hand dismissively.
“Our own mission is more important.
We don’t have time to waste on a lunatic.”
As if to confirm his words, the faint rumble of an engine drifted in from somewhere in the distance.
Viktor’s heart skipped a beat.
He instinctively straightened up and fixed his gaze on the far side of the intersection.
The three soldiers who had been trying to remove the traffic policeman also noticed the sound.
They immediately gave up on the stubborn man and hurried back to their positions.
With no one bothering him anymore, the traffic policeman stopped shouting, straightened his uniform, returned to his original position, and once again stood there staring blankly down the empty street.
The rumble of the engines grew louder and louder.
Soon, the clatter of metal tracks became clearly audible.
The cobblestones beneath their feet began to tremble, as though a thousand horses were charging toward them.
Everyone—including Viktor—felt the tension.
It was as if the air itself had suddenly grown heavier, making it difficult to breathe.
People found themselves instinctively opening their mouths, drawing deep breaths to steady their nerves.
“For the Soviet Union!”
Someone suddenly shouted the slogan.
Almost instinctively, Viktor opened his mouth to join in, but the words caught in his throat.
A trace of embarrassment made him swallow them back.
“For the Soviet Union!”
Although Viktor remained silent, many of the twenty-odd soldiers around him echoed the cry.
Their voices, however, were uneven and lacked conviction.
“For the Motherland!”
Another voice rang out.
“For the Motherland!”
This time, the response was far louder and more unified.
The heavy tension hanging over the street seemed to lift slightly with the shouting.
Viktor glanced back and saw that the twenty-odd soldiers who had accompanied him had already taken up positions behind the hastily erected barricade.
The makeshift defenses were flimsy and would never withstand a determined assault, but at least no one had fled.
After another two or three minutes, the sound of the engine became unmistakable.
A tank slowly emerged onto the street west of the intersection.
Because the road sloped downward, the first thing to appear was the tip of its gun barrel, followed by the open turret hatch and the German commander standing half-exposed above it.
The tank seemed to run over something.
Its hull jolted twice, and then the right side briefly lifted off the ground.
It continued forward for a short distance, climbed the slope, and finally rolled into the open intersection, revealing its entire silhouette.
Moments later, the German infantry accompanying the tank appeared one after another on both sides of the street.
The commander standing in the turret quickly spotted Viktor and his men across the intersection.
Following his orders, the German soldiers calmly began setting up their firing positions.
Two machine guns were deployed, while the tank slowly adjusted the elevation of its main gun, ready to open fire at any moment.
Viktor straightened his collar one last time.
He exchanged a glance with the visibly nervous Sofia, then picked up the small Soviet flag bearing the hammer and sickle that had been prepared in advance and strode across the street toward the Germans.
Logically, carrying a white flag would have been the safest choice.
The problem was that, from the Soviet point of view, anyone who dared to negotiate under a white flag would almost certainly end up in prison afterward.
The tank’s engine fell silent.
The German commander, wearing a pair of dark sunglasses, watched Viktor’s steady approach with obvious curiosity.
Fortunately, he gave no order to fire while Viktor crossed the intersection.
However, just as Viktor reached the middle of the crossroads, that stubborn traffic policeman suddenly spat fiercely in his direction and shouted something in Polish.
The unexpected outburst startled Viktor, who had been completely focused on the Germans.
After crossing the relatively narrow intersection, Viktor stopped beside a fire hydrant.
By then, the setting sun was shining through a gap between the buildings, casting a sharp boundary of light and shadow across the street.
The German tank remained in the shadow.
Viktor stood exactly on the line separating light from darkness.
“Commander of the German Wehrmacht,” Viktor called out, stopping a short distance away and looking up at the German officer who remained standing in the tank turret.
“I am Lieutenant Viktor Viktorovich Tarasev of the State Security Directorate of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
At 3:45 this afternoon, acting under the orders of the People’s Commissariat of Defence of the Soviet Union, our forces assumed control of Lviv’s transportation network, city defense, public security, and broadcasting system.
According to the friendship treaty previously concluded between our two countries, Lviv, as an integral part of Soviet territory, falls within the Soviet sphere of operations and should be regarded as territory to be recovered by the Soviet Union after the conclusion of military operations.
In the spirit of the friendship and mutual assistance treaty between our two nations, Commander, I ask that you honor the agreement and withdraw your troops from the city of Lviv.”
After speaking, Viktor took his identification card from the breast pocket of his tunic and held it up.
Only then did Sofia, standing a few steps behind him, begin translating his words into German.
The German commander remained silent for a moment as he studied Viktor.
Finally, he gestured to one of the soldiers below.
The soldier hurried forward, took Viktor’s identification, and handed it up to the commander.
“Lieutenant Viktor,” the German commander said after examining the document.
To Viktor’s surprise, he spoke in fluent Russian.
“You claim that your forces have taken control of Lviv’s transportation, city defense, public security, and broadcasting…” He paused, then pointed toward the traffic policeman with a faint smile.
“Do you hear what that man is shouting?
He’s yelling, ‘Long live Poland!
Death to all despicable invaders!’ Well, that doesn’t exactly support what you’ve just told me.”
“He’s simply a madman,” Viktor replied with a smile after glancing back at the traffic policeman.
“We can take control of a city, Commander, but we can’t control the mind of a lunatic.”
The German commander handed the identification back to the soldier, signaling him to return it.
“The orders I received,” he said, “were to capture Lviv, not to hand it over to your forces.
Therefore, before taking any further action, I must report the situation to my superiors.”
“In that case,” Viktor replied immediately, “I suggest that, until you receive new orders, both sides remain in their current positions and allow the troops to rest.”
“In principle,” the German commander said with a nod, “I am willing to accept your proposal, Lieutenant Viktor.”