The next week was a blur of shadows and lies. Jake felt like he was being stretched thin, a single man pulled in two opposite directions, the strain threatening to tear him apart. He was fighting a two-front war, one in the smoke-filled rooms of party politics, the other in the cold, silent alleys of the city, and a single mistake on either front would be fatal.
The first front was the public war against Orlov—or rather, the public charade of protecting Orlov. Jake had to attend the clandestine meetings of the party leadership, his face a carefully composed mask of calm vigilance. He played his part to perfection. He would listen intently as Orlov spoke, nodding at the appropriate times, his expression one of a loyal subordinate. He subtly reinforced the narrative of the "Okhrana plot," referring to it in hushed, serious tones, reminding everyone of the enemy's cunning.
He fed carefully selected pieces of information to the respected intellectual, Stepan Shaumian. "Comrade Orlov seems distracted, worried," Jake would mention in a private aside. "It's clear this vile Okhrana campaign is taking its toll on him. We must support him." He was painting himself as the dutiful shield, the ever-watchful guardian, and in doing so, he was cementing his own reputation as a man of great strategic depth and unshakeable loyalty. The lie was working. Men who had once dismissed him as a mere thug now sought his opinion. He was building his own power base, one carefully constructed falsehood at a time. The constant performance was utterly exhausting.
The second front was the secret war against "Giorgi Beria." This war was known only to two people: himself and Kamo. It was a grueling, paranoid existence. They slept in shifts in a series of squalid, flea-bitten rooms, their days and nights dictated by the movements of their quarry. Tailing Yagoda was nothing like following a clumsy informant like Fikus. Yagoda was a professional. He moved with a quiet, deliberate purpose. He varied his routes, he would suddenly double back on himself, he would pause at shop windows to study the reflections, checking for a tail.
More than once, Jake and Kamo had to dive into a stinking alley or duck behind a cart, their hearts pounding, certain they had been spotted. But Yagoda's caution seemed to be his default state, the ingrained habit of a man living a double life.
The work was mind-numbing and terrifying in equal measure. Hours of sheer boredom spent huddled in a freezing doorway would be shattered by a sudden, heart-stopping moment of activity. They documented everything: the bakery where he bought his bread, the laundry where he dropped his clothes, the two other revolutionaries he met with for what looked like legitimate party business.
Jake quickly realized Yagoda was not a simple informant selling secrets for a few rubles. He was a true double agent, deeply embedded, actively participating in the revolution he was systematically betraying. This made him infinitely more dangerous.
The psychological toll on Jake was immense. He was living on black tea and nervous energy. The meager bread they could afford tasted like sawdust in his mouth. Sleep, when it came, was shallow and filled with nightmarish images: the vacant look in Giorgi's eyes, the surprised expression on the face of the dead Okhrana agent, Orlov's predatory smile. He felt the persona of "Soso" calcifying around him, becoming less of a role and more of his reality. His default state was no longer the gentle empathy of Jake Vance, but the cold, calculating paranoia of Joseph Stalin. He was constantly assessing threats, weighing risks, guarding his secrets. He was becoming a stranger to himself.
The only person he could be remotely honest with was Kamo, but even that bond was forged on the foundational lie of his own identity. Kamo saw a brilliant, ruthless leader. He did not see the terrified history teacher from the future, screaming silently inside the shell.
The strain became unbearable. One evening, desperate for a moment of clean air, of simple human connection, he went to see Kato. He brought a small parcel with a loaf of decent bread, a small wedge of cheese, and a handful of rubles—the proceeds from one of Kamo's less violent "expropriations" from a wealthy merchant.
He found her mending a shirt by candlelight. When she saw him, she didn't smile. A flicker of something—fear? pity?—crossed her face before she composed it into a mask of polite neutrality.
"Soso," she said, her voice quiet. She accepted the parcel with a formal nod of thanks.
"You should eat," he said, his own voice sounding hollow and unfamiliar.
She looked at him then, truly looked at him, and her polite mask crumbled slightly. "You should eat," she countered softly. "You look like a ghost. Your coat hangs off you. Where do you go all night? What are you doing?"
The simple, wifely questions were like daggers. He wanted to confess everything, to collapse at her feet and tell her about the two-front war, about the traitors, about the crushing weight of it all. He wanted her to tell him it was alright, that he was still a good man.
But he couldn't. To tell her would be to endanger her. Knowledge was a contagion in this world, and she was the only pure thing left in his life. He had to protect her innocence, even if it meant destroying their intimacy.
"Party business," he said, the excuse sounding weak and pathetic even to his own ears. "It's a difficult time."
Kato didn't press him. She didn't argue. She just looked at him with an expression of profound and bottomless sadness, as if she were a widow mourning a husband who was still standing in front of her. She had stopped trying to reach the man she married. She had accepted that he was gone.
"Be safe, Soso," she said, her voice barely a whisper. She turned back to her mending, her attention focused on the needle and thread, a small, simple task in a world that had grown too large and too terrible to comprehend. The conversation was over.
He left her apartment feeling a cold emptiness that was worse than any physical hunger. His victory in the backrooms of the revolution felt like ashes in his mouth. He was succeeding in his mission, but he was failing at being human. The chasm between the man he was becoming and the man he wanted to be had widened into an uncrossable canyon. His work was the only thing he had left. He threw himself back into it, the cold logic of the hunt a welcome anesthetic for his wounded soul.
The surveillance finally paid off on a moonless, freezing night. They trailed Yagoda through a labyrinth of back alleys to the old city cemetery. It was a place of ghosts, the crumbling tombstones like crooked teeth in the darkness.
Yagoda moved to a large, ornate crypt in the center of the cemetery. He waited. A few minutes later, another figure emerged from the shadows. This was no revolutionary. The man was tall, impeccably dressed in a fine wool greatcoat and a fur hat. He moved with an air of aristocratic authority. It was a high-ranking Tsarist government official, someone far, far above the station of a common police handler.
Jake and Kamo, hidden behind a large, granite mausoleum, watched in stunned silence. This confirmed it. Yagoda was a major asset.
They watched as the two men spoke, their conversation too quiet to overhear. After a few minutes, the official handed Yagoda a thick envelope, patted him on the shoulder, and departed.
Yagoda remained by the crypt, waiting. Jake assumed the meeting was over. But then, another figure emerged from the darkness behind a different set of tombstones.
The figure walked directly up to Yagoda.
It was Orlov.
Jake's heart stopped. Kamo let out a choked, disbelieving gasp beside him.
This wasn't a coincidence. Orlov wasn't there to spy on Yagoda. They greeted each other like colleagues, familiar and businesslike. Orlov said something, and Yagoda laughed, a short, sharp sound in the cold air.
They were not rivals. They were not from two different networks. They were partners. They were part of the same conspiracy.
The entire world Jake had constructed, the two-front war he had been so carefully fighting, was a lie. He hadn't been a master strategist playing a complex game. He had been a fool, a puppet, dancing to a tune he didn't even know was playing.
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