Chapter 93: As for kidnapping, I am a professional.

Sure enough, the next second the door was pushed open, and both Chuikov and Zhukov walked in. In an instant, it felt as if dawn had broken.

“Sorry, Drelovsky. I startled you. Please forgive us. This comes from the Supreme Leader’s security vetting.”

Political vetting was routine in the red Soviet state. During the revolution, almost all the landowners, nobles, and capitalists had basically been dragged out and shot. It was no exaggeration to say that a background of three generations of poor farmers and four generations of beggars was the kind most favored by the upper ranks.

Chuikov took Meimumu’s hand and told him personally that the former commander of the Sixty-Second Army, Lopatin, was actually his uncle in this identity.

Meimumu stared, dumbstruck.

So I’m barely counting as a military brat now?

Still, having an uncle who was a surrenderist didn’t sound like an advantage at all. If anything, it looked like a surefire way to catch a bad break.

Zhukov spoke as well, rattling on in a roundabout way to tell Meimumu that it wasn’t that they didn’t want to make him a national hero. It was just that if he became famous, his uncle would be in a very awkward position. In truth, the organization still had great trust in Comrade Lopatin, so perhaps Meimumu would need to endure a little inconvenience.

Once the Supreme Leader was in a better mood, they would probably transfer his uncle to the Northwestern Front Army. By then, his own prospects would improve too, or so on and so forth.

The subtext, in the end, was only one sentence: promotion and money were fine; becoming a national hero was out of the question.

Heh.

That suited Meimumu perfectly.

Though he slapped his chest and swore he was only a screw in the Red Army, wherever the organization sent him was where he would go, after such a grand show of face, he was still rubbing his right index and middle fingers together for a reward.

And so, within three days, Meimumu was promoted for the third time.

At first he had dodged a bombing raid and risen to private first class. Then he had knocked out a tank and a machine-gun crew and made sergeant. Now, with three ranks at once, he had somehow become a captain.

Only this captain was a commander in name only, with not a single soldier under him.

It wasn’t that Chuikov was being stingy; it was that Meimumu himself didn’t want any men.

Damn it, if I’ve got a whole bunch of dead weight trailing after me, can I still have any fun casting magic?

So Meimumu’s mission remained guerrilla work.

But human nature is greedy, and once a decapitation plan succeeds, it becomes the kind of deal with enormous returns for almost no investment.

Even that old fox Chuikov had gotten greedy.

“The Motherland needs capable comrades like you, good comrades who can strike the invaders with the fiercest possible blow. However...”

Yes, the word however means everything before it was just filler.

“I heard you infiltrated the enemy headquarters and killed more than thirty men with a dagger?”

Soviet intelligence still had some skill; at least they knew how the enemy had died.

“No, just a little over twenty. I cut the power, and I put tranquilizer in their food.”

Chuikov’s brows twitched upward. Clearly, Meimumu’s style, leaning so heavily toward covert action, did not sit especially well with this old-school commander. As one of the rare generals who had also served as a diplomat, Chuikov’s notions of propriety were even looser than those of the average general.

“No matter. I’m not blaming you. We can repay the brutal fascists, who slaughtered our people, by any means necessary, and it would all be justified. I only wonder whether, if possible, you might help us capture a German general?”

“Uh, I should be able to try. But I may need some tools.”

“No problem.”

Chuikov went out, and before long an officer from the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs came in. That fellow wore the smile of a victor, as if to say, I told you so—this kid is born to be an intelligence operative. His true value is not on the battlefield.

Meimumu, pretending to be utterly baffled, asked the big shot from the internal affairs bureau for a little sedative and some excellent binding rope.

After he went out, even Zhukov offered him words of encouragement.

Meimumu was only a somewhat capable soldier at this point. If he had not taken down an entire headquarters, men like Zhukov would never have given him a second glance.

On the night of October twentieth, Meimumu set out again.

The Hans were already under severe strain at the front, and now there were checkpoints layered three and four deep. Unfortunately for them, it made no difference to this one. That night the snow came down hard, with force-seven winds, and visibility was less than five meters. Unless someone rushed straight up to your face, it was nearly impossible to tell friend from foe.

At the front line they were all firing blindly anyway; anyone coming from the opposite side got shot at on sight. In the Second World War, soldiers from every nation had miserable marksmanship. On average, it took twenty-five thousand rounds to kill one man. Most bullets went into suppressive fire and area fire.

Aside from the Russians’ hurrah charges, it was rare to see a whole mass of soldiers drop in neat rows. During the defense of Stalingrad, more than half the German dead had actually frozen to death from lack of supplies.

In weather like this, Meimumu was in his element. He could fly.

Only one thing was truly awful.

It was freezing.

At twenty degrees below zero, with the wind howling, water thrown out into the air would freeze in barely ten seconds.

Using the same method, Meimumu quickly found another big fish. It was an abandoned villa, now completely converted into a German command post. At first he intended to do it the old way, just blast in and be done with it.

Since the idiotic internal affairs man had already taken the bait, and since someone was determined to infiltrate the Soviets’ special intelligence organization, the Red House, he had to show some professional standards.

Something like assassin creed was far too exaggerated.

This time, Meimumu carefully scouted the terrain. Then he crouched on top of a storage room and waited a full half hour before the man who looked like a general finally went to the toilet.

Ever since he had gutted their headquarters last time, the Hans had clearly tightened security. Even when a general went to the bathroom, two guards followed him, standing at the door with cocked MP40 submachine guns.

For Meimumu, that level of protection was of course useless.

He activated the ring on his finger, aimed above one of the stalls, and opened a portal.

The little device gifted by the internal affairs officer struck the general in the neck, and the general, just after wiping his backside and pulling up his pants, went limp on the spot. Before he had even fully collapsed, Meimumu’s magical whip had already bound him, hauling him upward as easily as if he were a fish on a line.

Without anyone noticing, a general vanished.

To disguise the impossible scene, Meimumu even left behind a few minor clues.

Outside, after waiting more than ten minutes, the guards began to feel something was wrong and asked softly, “General?”

“Mm. Mm...” came a voice from behind the door. Through the crack they could see the color of a general’s uniform, so they paid it no mind.

But after another ten minutes, why was he still in there?

At last sensing something was off, the guards knocked, then broke the door down. There was no trace of their general at all. Just as they were stunned and uncertain, thinking the Russians had somehow pulled off some impossible disappearing act, a large section of the bathroom ceiling suddenly came crashing down.

The news quickly reached Hitler in Berlin.

The little mustache was practically tearing his hair out.

“What? Are the guards all idiots and idiots only? My general was carried out through the ceiling of a toilet, through an abandoned heating pipe? After you find out exactly what happened, shoot the whole lot of those worthless fools!”