The folded piece of paper in Kamo's hand was no bigger than a thumbnail, but it felt to Jake like a grenade with the pin pulled. It was a physical manifestation of chaos, a random, impossible variable thrown into his meticulously constructed machine. His lie, so carefully crafted, so perfectly balanced, had just grown a horrifying, cancerous truth.
"Let me see it," Jake said, his voice tight.
Kamo handed it over. The paper was cheap, slightly damp. Unfolding it revealed a simple, crudely drawn symbol: a circle with a cross through it. An Okhrana marker. A signal. Jake had invented the location out of thin air, choosing a random, grimy alley in his mind to add a layer of verisimilitude to Fikus's confession. And it was real. The sheer, astronomical unlikelihood of it made his head spin.
"This is good, Soso!" Kamo whispered, his voice a low, excited growl. His mind, ever the direct instrument, saw only the opportunity. "This proves it! Your interrogation methods are even better than we thought! You squeezed a real secret out of that lying tavern owner without even knowing it!"
Jake said nothing, his mind racing, trying to process the terrifying implications.
"This changes everything!" Kamo continued, his energy infectious. "Forget Orlov for a moment. This is a live trail! We can watch this drop-box. We can see who uses it. We can catch another traitor, maybe even a whole cell! We can use this to prove to the entire party that your method works!"
Kamo's logic was sound from his perspective. It was the thinking of a soldier who sees a new, unexpected target of opportunity. But Jake, the architect of the fragile, overarching strategy, saw only the catastrophic risk.
His entire plan for neutralizing Orlov was built on a foundation of carefully controlled information—a lie presented as a truth. This new, real drop-box was an uncontrolled element. If they watched it and caught some low-level informant, what would that prove? Nothing. If they caught no one, it would seem like a dead end. But what if they caught someone connected to a different Okhrana cell? A cell that knew nothing of Orlov? That would actively discredit Fikus's confession, suggesting Fikus was simply spilling details from his own handler, not revealing a grand plot against Orlov. The entire complex web of manipulation would unravel. Pulling on this new, unexpected thread could bring the whole tapestry crashing down.
The safe path, the "Jake Vance" path, was to shut it down. Destroy the marker. Tell Kamo that Levan was mistaken, that it was just a piece of trash. Dismiss it as a dangerous coincidence and stick to the original, much safer plan of slowly, politically strangling Orlov.
But as he looked at Kamo's eager, feral grin, another, colder part of his mind took over. The part that had planned the crossfire. The part that had dictated the confession. The emerging Stalin. That part of him knew that an unknown variable was the most dangerous thing on any battlefield. To ignore a second snake in the room just because you were focused on the first was a fatal mistake. True control didn't come from sticking to a plan; it came from controlling all the information, from understanding every piece on the board. To leave this thread unexplored was to leave a loaded gun in the hands of a stranger.
He had to know. He had to see it through, no matter the risk. It was a choice born of terrifying ambition, a desire not just to survive the game but to master it.
"No," Jake said, his voice quiet but firm, crushing Kamo's enthusiasm.
"No?" Kamo repeated, his face falling. "Soso, this is a gift from the gods of revolution!"
"A gift horse whose mouth is full of sharp teeth," Jake countered. He looked at Kamo, his expression grim. "You are right, this is a live trail. Which means it is also a potential trap. If Levan, in his youthful enthusiasm, could find it, who's to say the Okhrana didn't let him find it? Who's to say it isn't being watched right now?"
He let the paranoia sink in, using it as a tool to regain control of the situation. "We cannot send a team. We cannot send Levan or anyone else. Too many people know about the confession now. If anyone from our circle is seen near that spot, and something goes wrong, the connection will be made instantly. The entire operation—the one to cage Orlov—will be compromised."
Kamo slowly nodded, seeing the logic.
"This is too sensitive," Jake concluded. "If this is to be watched, it must be watched by people who understand the stakes completely. People who will not be recognized." He paused, meeting Kamo's eyes. "You and I. We will watch the drop-box ourselves."
The decision hung in the cold night air. He was committing them to a new, secret, parallel investigation, doubling their risk, doubling their exposure. He was juggling a public campaign of political manipulation against Orlov while simultaneously launching a clandestine hunt for a ghost. He was no longer playing one chess game; he was playing two, blindfolded, where a single mistake on either board meant death.
For the next two nights, they took turns. From the grimy window of a vacant tenement overlooking the alley, they watched. The hours were a slow torture of cold, boredom, and gnawing tension. Nothing happened. The loose brick remained untouched. Jake began to wonder if he had made a terrible mistake, if Kamo's initial assessment was right and he should have just burned the marker.
Then, on the third night, it happened.
It was well after midnight, the city plunged into a deep, quiet slumber. A figure emerged from the far end of the street, moving with a furtive haste, hugging the shadows. It wasn't a uniformed policeman or a known Okhrana thug. The figure was dressed in the simple, rough clothes of a worker.
Jake's heart began to pound against his ribs. He and Kamo pressed themselves against the dirty window frame, trying to stay hidden. The figure reached the wall, glanced nervously up and down the empty street, and then quickly deposited a small, folded message into the slot behind the loose brick before melting back into the darkness.
"Did you see his face?" Kamo whispered, his voice tight with excitement.
"No," Jake breathed. "He kept his head down."
But they both knew they couldn't let it go. They waited five agonizing minutes, then slipped out of the tenement and retrieved the note. It was another simple marker, a different symbol this time. A signal that the first message had been received.
They returned to their lookout post, their senses on high alert. Another hour passed. Then, a second figure appeared. This one walked with more confidence, a man taking a late-night stroll. He paused by the wall, casually leaned against it as if to light a cigarette, and in one smooth motion, retrieved the second marker. He didn't look at it. He just palmed it and continued on his way.
As he passed under one of the few working gas lamps on the street, he lifted his head for a brief moment, his face illuminated in the sickly yellow light.
Kamo let out a low, confused grunt. "I don't know him. I've never seen him before."
But Jake froze. His blood turned to ice in his veins. The world seemed to shrink to that single, illuminated face. It was a face he knew with absolute certainty. Not from the streets of Tbilisi, but from the glossy pages of a 21st-century history book. It was the face of Genrikh Yagoda—a man who, in the timeline Jake knew, would one day rise to become the ruthless head of the NKVD, Stalin's own secret police, the architect of some of the Great Purge's worst atrocities before being consumed by it himself.
Here, now, in 1906, he was just another young revolutionary. And he was a traitor.
Kamo looked at Jake's pale, stricken face. "Soso? What is it? Who is that?"
Jake stared out the window at the receding figure, at the ghost from a future nightmare walking the streets of his present. He realized with a terrifying, soul-crushing clarity that the web was not just larger than he had imagined. It was infinitely more complex and monstrous. He wasn't just fighting the Okhrana of the past. He was fighting the seeds of his own future terror.
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