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Chapter 6 - The Price of Cleverness

The silence in the room was a fragile skin stretched over a screaming void. Jake's mind replayed the sequence with sickening clarity. His clever plan. His moment of triumph. His confident order. His signature on a boy's death warrant. The faint, satisfied smile he'd felt just moments ago now tasted like poison.

The skin of silence broke.

"No," Kato whispered from the corner, her hand flying to her mouth. Her eyes were fixed on Jake, wide with a horror that mirrored his own.

Kamo let out a string of vicious curses in Georgian, a guttural sound of pure fury. He wasn't angry at Jake; he was angry at the universe, at the mistake, at the enemy who was always one step ahead. He began pacing again, no longer a caged bear but a wolf caught in a trap, ready to chew its own leg off to escape.

"That damn coat!" he roared, slamming his fist on the table so hard the teacups rattled. "The boy will be taken. They'll let him get close to the flat, watch him, see if he signals anyone, and then they'll sweep him up so quietly the neighbors won't even hear it."

Jake felt a wave of nausea so profound he had to brace himself against the wall. He could see him. Giorgi. The boy's face, shining with pride and revolutionary zeal. A child playing a game he didn't understand, walking into the arms of men who would dismantle him piece by piece in a damp, lightless cellar.

"He's not hard like Mikho," Kamo continued, his voice a low, terrifying growl. "He's just a kid. He'll break in an hour. He'll tell them everything. He'll give them this address." He stopped and turned, his eyes locking onto Jake's. "We have an hour. Maybe less. Then they will be at this door."

The immediate, obvious choice screamed in Jake's mind. Run. The Jake Vance solution. Grab Kato, grab whatever they could carry, and flee into the night. Disappear. It was the only humane thing to do. Preserve life. Escape the trap.

But the brutal logic of this new world had already begun to infect him. Running was what they expected. It would mean abandoning their entire network. It would mean a life on the move, sleeping in ditches, constantly looking over their shoulders until the day the Okhrana finally caught up. It wasn't a solution; it was merely a postponement of the inevitable.

Kamo suddenly stopped pacing. The frantic energy vanished from him, replaced by a chilling, unnatural stillness. He looked at Jake, his eyes narrowed, the gears of a cold and terrible calculus turning behind them.

"We can't save the boy," Kamo said, his voice flat, stating it as an unchangeable fact of physics, like gravity or the rising sun. "That is a fact."

He took a step closer, lowering his voice to a conspiratorial whisper that was more terrifying than his shouting. "But his capture… it can be useful."

Jake stared at him, not comprehending. "Useful? Kamo, they're going to torture him. He's a child."

"And they are the Okhrana," Kamo shot back, his voice like flint. "Listen to me, Soso. Think. They don't know that we know about the coat. They think they are the only ones with this secret. They will be confident. Arrogant. They will send a small team to grab the boy. Four men, maybe five. Not an army. They will expect a quiet snatch-and-grab, not a fight."

He leaned in, his eyes glinting with a horrifying, predatory light. "We can set a trap. Right outside Arsen's flat."

The meaning crashed into Jake with the force of a physical blow. He felt the air leave his lungs. Kamo was suggesting they use Giorgi as bait. That they go to the location, hide in the shadows, and watch as the Okhrana agents closed in on the unsuspecting boy. They would let the trap snap shut on him, and in that precise moment, they would spring their own.

It was a plan of breathtaking cruelty. It was strategically brilliant and morally monstrous. It required them to watch a child walk to his doom and use his final moments of freedom as a tactical advantage. The very idea was a blasphemy against every principle Jake Vance had ever held. His soul recoiled from it.

But the lessons of the night screamed at him.

His humane, modern idea for a diversion to save Mikho had been laughed at. The world had told him it was foolish.

His clever, intellectual plan to sidestep the informant Fikus had felt like a victory, but his oversight, his focus on the grand strategy instead of the details, had led directly to this catastrophe. The world had punished him for being Jake Vance.

Now, Kamo was offering him the Stalin solution. A plan forged in ice and blood. A plan that sacrificed one pawn to shatter the enemy's attack. Run, and Kato's life becomes a frantic, desperate flight from certain doom. But this… this monstrous, unthinkable act… if it worked, it could cripple the Okhrana cell hunting them. It could buy them time. It could buy them safety.

It could save her.

He glanced over at Kato. She was standing frozen by the stove, her hand still over her mouth, her eyes wide with terror as she tried to follow the hushed, deadly conversation. Her life, he realized with sickening certainty, depended on him making the correct, ruthless choice. The choice a survivor would make. The choice Stalin would make.

He closed his eyes. For a single, agonizing second, he saw Giorgi's face again, his expression of trusting, boyish pride. He felt a piece of his 21st-century soul wither and blacken into ash. This was the price. This was the first great payment on a debt he would spend a lifetime accruing.

Then he opened them.

Kamo, watching him, saw the change. The flicker of horror and indecision in Soso's eyes vanished, extinguished as if by a sudden frost. It was replaced by something cold, hard, and utterly unreadable.

Jake's voice, when it came, was steady. It was devoid of emotion, a flat instrument of command.

"Get the weapons," he said. "We don't have much time."

He turned his gaze on Kamo, meeting the man's predatory stare with one of his own. "Explain the setup. We will use the boy as bait."

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