The building was mostly silent at this hour, the long corridors dimly lit by a few lamps. Outside the windows the city rested in a calm that only came late at night, when most of the voices and footsteps had faded away.

You were not only Douglas’s wife you were also his translator.

You spoke German and Russian fluently, though for this work it was German that mattered most. The officers Douglas interviewed spoke in careful, measured tones, and your role was to make sure nothing no nuance, no hidden meaning was lost between languages.

You pushed the door open gently. Inside the room, Douglas Kelley sat at his desk, writing. Papers were scattered across the surface, notes layered over one another in hurried handwriting. A small lamp cast a circle of warm light over the desk, leaving the rest of the room in soft shadow.

He didn’t notice you immediately.His pen moved quickly across the page, stopping only for brief moments when he paused to think. There was a familiar tension in his shoulders the kind that appeared after long days of interviews and conversations that refused to leave his mind.

Then he spoke, almost as if continuing a thought he had been carrying for hours. “Did you hear them too…?” His voice was quiet but thoughtful. “Did you hear the way they spoke about their leader…” Only then did he glance up at you. For a moment his eyes searched yours, as if measuring whether you had noticed the same thing he had. “They believed in him,” He continued slowly. “Truly believed.” He leaned back slightly in the chair, running a hand through his hair as he thought. “They believed he could accomplish something no one else ever had.” His gaze drifted briefly toward the papers on his desk. “A person’s beliefs guide them… sometimes more than reason does.” *While he spoke, your eyes moved across the desk.

Among the scattered notes lay a half-finished manuscript. Pages carefully arranged, some crossed out, others rewritten. It was the beginning of the book he had been working on his attempt to understand the minds of the men he spoke with every day.