Chapter 1019: Schiller in 1991 (Part II)

Schiller frowned. He looked at Andro, who had collapsed to the ground, and then at the room full of agents. He coughed twice and said, "I don't know what the purpose of this little performance is, but you are completely wasting your time. Even if you take me back to Moscow, you won't get what you want."

"You've lost your memory, haven't you?" The man stepped forward, placed a pistol beside Schiller, and said, "You don't remember anything now, especially the details of your time working for the KGB, nor do you remember that you once served as the Director of the KGB's Eleventh Bureau."

Schiller frowned and turned to look at him. The man saluted him and said, "Petrov, Deputy Director of the KGB's Eleventh Bureau, pays his respects."

Just as Schiller was about to say something, Petrov pulled a badge from the inner pocket of his trench coat, handed it to Schiller, and said, "I think you should be quite familiar with this badge."

Schiller looked at the badge pinched between his fingers. His eyes suddenly widened, and he took the badge from Petrov's hand, for he was indeed very familiar with it. It was the Red Banner badge he had previously found in the folder containing the Philby list.

Schiller was very familiar with this badge because he had used it many times before to achieve his goals, and finally, through Kyla, a KGB agent lurking at the CIA station in Metropolis, and her contact, he had sent this badge back to Moscow.

Schiller's intentions had been simple; he had used the badge only as a stopgap measure. But the badge did not belong to him, and even though Philby had passed away, the badge should have returned to where it belonged.

But the next second, Petrov spoke up: "You once instructed that once the Red Banner medal you obtained returned to Moscow, we were to come find you and bring it to you again, as this would tell you all the answers."

Schiller's pupils shrank. He turned his head to look at Petrov and asked, "The Red Banner medal I obtained???!!!"

"You likely don't remember everything, but that's alright. Before you left, you instructed us that you might suffer from amnesia by then and not remember any details at all, but only you would be able to read the information carried by this medal. When the time came, you would know everything."

Schiller narrowed his eyes and cast his gaze back toward the medal. Suddenly, as if he had recalled something, he stood there stunned in shock. Then, he said to Petrov, "Since you say you are my subordinate, then right now, I need a telephone. Go get me one immediately."

Petrov said nothing, simply giving a look to the agent at the door. In less than two minutes, a telephone was delivered to Schiller. Schiller picked up the phone, dialed a familiar string of numbers, and said:

"Hello? Alfred? I know, you were the one responsible for transporting the Philby list, and I was the contact person sent by Moscow to take over the Philby list. Now, I have a question I want to ask you: whose Red Banner medal was sent along with the Philby list?"

Alfred, on the other end of the line, heard what Schiller said and immediately understood that Schiller was likely in a special state right now and wanted to verify some things. He immediately spoke up: "Professor Schiller, has your paper not been published yet?"

"Yes, Alfred, but it's only a little bit away. Perhaps next week, you will be able to see my work in the journal. At that time, please do not hesitate to offer your guidance."

Realizing the phone had not been hung up, Alfred recalled Schiller's question, then frowned and said: "Red Banner medal? Where would there be any Red Banner medal? I was only responsible for transporting the Philby list..."

"Did Philby not put his Red Banner medal inside the list?" Schiller asked in return.

Alfred took a deep breath, then tried hard to recall the situation at the time, saying with some surprise: "Comrade Philby was only able to obtain the Red Banner medal because he provided such a list to the Moscow side after returning to the country. How could there possibly be a Red Banner medal before he had even returned to the Soviet Union?"

"Moreover, even if he had someone else's Red Banner medal, he would have had no opportunity to put it in the list. The situation at the time was extremely urgent; if he had wanted to put other things inside, he would inevitably have had to evade the eyes of many more people."

"Furthermore, for such an important list, he could not have put anything inside that could indicate its importance. This is the basic quality of an intelligence officer. Therefore, the list was just a list, merely a few sheets of paper; there was no medal."

Schiller hung up the phone and sighed softly. This was indeed his own fault; at the time, this medal was found in the folder of the Philby list, so he had preemptively assumed that it must be Philby's medal.

But there was indeed a problem with the timeline, and the causality was incorrect. It was precisely because Philby successfully escaped back to the Soviet Union and then recited the list from his memory that he was able to obtain the Red Banner medal. Thus, it was impossible for him to have obtained a medal issued by the Soviet Union before he had even returned there.

At the same time, Schiller had never participated in actual intelligence work, so he hadn't realized that when transporting such an important list, Philby could never have put anything related to the Soviet Union inside.

At the time, Philby didn't know if he could escape, which was why he wrote this list. Although he eventually escaped and successfully used his brain to bring the list out, it resulted in the handwritten Philby list having less value.

But at the time, not knowing if he could escape, the importance of this list was self-evident. As a legendary intelligence officer who could play all British intelligence organizations in the palm of his hand, Philby could not have made such a low-level mistake.

In other words, this medal was indeed not Philby's. Then, was this medal the original Schiller's?

Schiller rubbed the surface of the medal. It was indeed an early Red Banner medal. This meant that the original Schiller had at least achieved the same merits as Philby to be able to obtain this medal. So, what exactly had he done?

At this moment, Petrov saluted again and said: "Director, I think you need to have a good talk with this medal. We will wait for you downstairs."

After speaking, all the agents nimbly withdrew, leaving only Schiller stunned in place. After a while, Schiller finally reacted: what did it mean to have a good talk with this medal?

Suddenly, Schiller looked up and widened his eyes, because he remembered that the Red Banner medal in his hand looked exactly like the iron key used by the Super-Ego when he opened that door full of chains.

Schiller took the elevator down and found the Super-Ego, saying: "Give me some of the system power you obtained. I need to verify something."

The Super-Ego seemed to know what Schiller was going to do, so he immediately gave Schiller a portion of the system's power.

After Schiller returned to reality, his fingertips shone with some light. When he brushed his fingertips over the Red Banner medal again, he discovered that the medal lit up with a faint glow. The next second, Schiller entered a dream.

Faint dust brushed over an old camera lens. One photo after another was developed and fell onto the table. In all the scenes, there was the figure of a man busy at work.

In an office with a red flag hanging on the wall, in a production workshop filled with slogans, in a magnificent assembly hall—all contained a man with a serious expression.

He wore different clothes: sometimes a shirt for political work, sometimes the long trench coat often worn by intelligence officers, sometimes a dashing military uniform. But these figures all possessed the same face: it was Schiller.

However, because of the different facial expressions and muscle movements, he did not look exactly like the current Schiller. More importantly, these scenes were covered by a layer of dust from the era, making everything look blurred and unclear.

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At this moment, a voice rang in Schiller's ear:

"You must be very curious about who I am, what I have done, and why you are here. But please don't be anxious; I will tell you everything, comrade."

"I am Schiller, or rather, I am called Schiller. But I was not originally Schiller. Before I was reborn, I was not Schiller."

"I am a Soviet, of Russian ethnicity, an ordinary Bolshevik soldier."

"Yes, I am a reborn person. After I died and was resurrected again, I suddenly realized that I had returned to my childhood."

"Time flowed backward, and everything had yet to happen. To anyone, this is an incomparably precious opportunity, and it is the same for me."

Schiller heard that this voice was always filled with a seriousness and coldness unique to a soldier, completely different from his own voice.

"And so, I decided to do something to change that foreseeable future. I think you have already received my gift; that is the gift I left for you, left for this world..."

"You must be very curious now about how all this happened, and that must start from that winter in 1991."

Accompanied by the reverberation of the deep voice, the old projector began to play again.

Goose-feather snowflakes drifted gently from the sky. When they landed on the tips of the birch trees, they didn't startle a single sparrow. Looking in through the slightly yellowed window lattice, a red flag hung on the white wall.

Below the red flag was a radio with an antenna raised. At this moment, accompanied by the "crackle-crackle" sound in the background, a voice came from the radio:

"The Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union confirms that with the establishment of the Commonwealth of Independent States, the Soviet Union, as a state and a subject of international law, is about to cease its existence..."

With a "click," a hand pressed the button on the radio.

Following the cuff upward, the chest of the neat military uniform was covered with many shining medals. And when the finger pressed the radio button again, the channel changed. A pleasant piece of music came from the radio; it was "Farewell of Slavianka."

The finger with a callus from the gun brushed over the chamber. The crisp sound of the Makarov pistol being cocked vanished into the drumbeat of the music.

When the muzzle pressed against the chin, the sparrow still sat quietly on the treetop.

"Bang!"

In the quiet room, a gunshot echoed. Outside the window, as the little bird flew up, the accumulated snow on the treetop fell down with a rustle.

In the winter of 1991, the red flag over the Kremlin kissed the snow and said goodbye to this world.

When the sparrow landed on the white earth, a child full of ideals, a steadfast soldier, fell in the heavy snow of Minsk.

That land soaked in blood was just as red as the red flag fluttering over Petrograd in 1917.