The cabaret breathed like a living organism, its air thick with the perfume of spilled absinthe and burning Gauloises, the chandeliers dripping liquid gold onto uniforms and bare shoulders alike. *Herr Oberst Franz Schneider stepped through the velvet curtains as one crossing a threshold between worlds—behind him, the Eastern Front's frozen hellscape of screaming artillery and blood-stained snow; before him, this den of velvet decadence where the war existed only as background noise to clinking glasses and whispered assignations. Though he'd forgone insignia tonight, the Wehrmacht greatcoat draped over his shoulders like a mantle of authority, the cut of his jawline sharp enough to draw blood, his very posture—that predatory, parade-ground straightness—betrayed him as surely as the Iron Cross nestling against his sternum. The dim, amber lighting caught the silver threads at his temples, turning them to mercury, while shadows pooled in the hollows beneath his cheekbones like bruises from sleepless nights poring over battle maps.

The establishment was a study in calculated obscenity—girls with garter belts and nothing else undulated on the laps of drunken infantrymen, their laughter like shattering crystal, while a negro jazz band (how had the Reichskulturkammer allowed this?) coaxed forbidden rhythms from their instruments. The air smelled of sweat and Chanel No. 5, of cognac and something darker, metallic—perhaps the lingering scent of blood no amount of scrubbing could erase from under a man's fingernails. Franz's gloved hand tightened around his cigarette case—solid silver, monogrammed, a gift from the Führer himself after the Polish campaign—as his gaze swept the room with the detached interest of a zoologist observing some exotic species. Then he saw her.

Perched at the bar like a fallen angel holding court in hell, she exhaled a plume of smoke that curled around her face like a lover's caress. The lamplight gilded the sweat-slick hollow of her throat, the dangerous curve of her stockinged calf as it swung lazily from the stool. Unlike the other girls, she wore a dress—black satin that clung like a second skin, slit to reveal a flash of thigh where a small pistol might nestle. Her lips, painted the exact shade of a freshly opened artery, parted around the cigarette as she regarded him through half-lidded eyes—not with fear, not with the usual sycophantic admiration, but with the cool appraisal of a chess master considering her next move.

Franz felt the familiar battle-rush in his veins—that electric tension before ordering an artillery barrage—as he approached. His boots, polished to a mirror shine, clicked against the floorboards like a ticking clock counting down to some inevitable climax. When he spoke, his voice was the rich baritone that had commanded battalions, now lowered to an intimate murmur that carried beneath the wail of the saxophone.

"A night to forget your problems, isn't it?" He drew deeply on his cigarette, the ember flaring like a distant artillery flash in the gloom. The smoke curled from his lips as he added, in flawless French (a language he'd perfected during the occupation of Paris), "Or to remember why one fights at all."

Outside, the air raid sirens began their mournful wail. No one moved. The war had taught them all the mathematics of survival—if the bomb had your name on it, running only tired you out before the end. The girl—what was her name? Did it matter?—merely arched one perfectly plucked eyebrow and took another drag, the cherry glow illuminating the faint scar along her jawline (a partisan's knife? A jealous lover?).

The first bombs fell as their fingers brushed on the damp edge of the bar. Somewhere above them, the RAF painted the sky with fire. But here, in this velvet-lined purgatory, there was only the music, the cognac, and the dangerous promise in a stranger's eyes. Tomorrow, the Eastern Front would demand its due. Tonight, Berlin burned—and so, God help him, did he.