The revelation hung in the cold, damp air of the cellar, a poisoned cloud that choked off all thought of strategy or cunning. Danilov's confession had ripped the chessboard to pieces. There was no more time for patient maneuvering, for whispered accusations, for the slow, methodical tightening of a political noose. There was only the brutal, screaming urgency of a clock counting down to annihilation. Twenty-four hours until the party's entire armed wing walked into a trap that would gut the revolution in the Caucasus for a generation.
Kamo was pacing, his caged-bear energy returned, magnified by a new layer of frantic desperation. "We have to warn them! We have to get a message to the men at the rail yard, tell them to call it off!"
"And what do we tell them?" Jake countered, his voice a sharp crack in the panic. "That an assassin we secretly abducted told us a story? They won't believe us. They'll think it's a trick, an attempt by our faction to seize control of the weapons for ourselves. The shipment will arrive, and in the confusion, the Okhrana will strike."
He was right. They were trapped by their own secrecy. To reveal their hand now would sow chaos and doubt, achieving the same result as the trap itself.
Jake's mind was a whirlwind. He saw the impending catastrophe, the faces of the revolutionaries he knew, walking into a massacre. He saw his entire, painstaking plan to control the situation turning to ash. But through the storm of panic, a single, hard, crystalline thought emerged. An idea so audacious, so steeped in risk and finality, that it took his breath away.
Orlov had given him a crisis. And a crisis was a lever.
"There is only one way," Jake said, his voice dropping to a low, intense calm that silenced Kamo's frantic pacing. "We cannot stop the trap from being sprung. So, we will seize the hand that springs it."
He turned to Kamo, his eyes burning with a cold, clear light. "Get Luka. Tell him to go to Stepan Shaumian. Tell him only this: Soso has uncovered a plot that threatens the immediate survival of the party. An emergency meeting of the Central Committee is required. Now. Not in an hour. Now. Tell him to use my name. He will listen."
An hour later, Jake walked into the backroom of the print shop. The air was thick with confusion and irritation. The emergency summons had dragged a dozen of the city's most important Bolsheviks from their beds and safe houses. They sat around the table, their faces tired and wary.
At the head of the table, Orlov sat with an expression of supreme confidence, tinged with a slight annoyance. He saw this as an unscheduled nuisance, nothing more. He was less than a day away from his ultimate triumph. When he saw Jake enter, his eyes narrowed slightly, a flicker of suspicion.
Jake did not sit. He remained standing, a silent, imposing figure near the door, his hand resting inside his coat. He waited until Shaumian, the last to arrive, had taken his seat.
"Comrades," Jake began, his voice clear and carrying to every corner of the room, silencing the muttering. "I have summoned you here because our party faces an existential threat."
He looked around the table, meeting the eyes of each member. "For weeks, we have been operating under the belief that the Okhrana was engaged in a sophisticated plot to frame one of our most senior leaders, Comrade Orlov." He paused, letting his gaze rest on Orlov himself. "We believed we were protecting him from a vile slander."
He let the silence hang for a beat. "We were wrong."
A wave of shocked disbelief and angry muttering erupted. Orlov shot to his feet, his face a mask of theatrical outrage. "What is the meaning of this, Soso? Have you gone mad? After all we've done to uncover their plot—"
"The plot was real," Jake cut in, his voice like a blade, slicing through Orlov's bluster. "But Comrade Orlov was not its target. He was its author."
The room exploded. Accusations of insanity, of provocation, of treason were hurled at Jake from all sides. Orlov stood tall amidst the chaos, pointing a finger at Jake, his face a picture of a man deeply, tragically betrayed. "He is the traitor! Can't you see? This is his power grab!"
But before the chaos could completely consume the room, Jake raised his voice, a roar of pure, cold authority that stunned them all into silence.
"You want proof?" he bellowed. "Bring in the witness!"
The door to the room burst open. Kamo and Luka, their faces grim as executioners, dragged the bruised, broken, and utterly terrified Danilov into the center of the room. They threw him to the floor at Orlov's feet.
A collective gasp went through the room. They all knew Danilov. He was Orlov's man.
Orlov stared down at his captured assassin, his face draining of all color, his confident outrage collapsing into a mask of pure, primal fear. He knew, in that instant, that the game was over.
"This man," Jake announced, his voice now a quiet, deadly instrument of judgment, "is Danilov. And he has a story to tell."
In front of the entire frozen, horrified committee, under Jake's cold, commanding questioning, the terrified Danilov repeated his confession. His voice was a pathetic, cracking sob, but his words were clear. He named Orlov as the man who ordered the execution of the informant Fikus. He named Yagoda as the accomplice who provided the intelligence.
And then, most damningly of all, he revealed the plan. The arms shipment. The train arriving tomorrow night. The warehouse. The plan to lead the Okhrana to a massacre that would annihilate the party's fighting strength.
When he was finished, the room was plunged into a stunned, horrified silence that was more profound than any noise. The truth of it, in all its monstrous detail, was undeniable.
Orlov looked from Danilov's broken form to the stony faces of his comrades, then finally to Jake. His expression was a rictus of pure, unadulterated hatred. He was finished. His political life was over.
The committee members, their faces pale with shock, turned their gaze from the traitor to the man who had exposed him. They were looking at Jake, their expressions a mixture of awe, terror, and a new, profound respect. He had just saved them from a historic catastrophe.
But Jake knew a political victory was not enough. A wounded snake is still dangerous. In this world, there could be no trials, no appeals, no chance for escape. The rot had to be cut out. Completely.
With a smooth, deliberate motion, he pulled the heavy Nagant revolver from his coat.
The metallic click as he cocked the hammer was the loudest sound Jake had ever heard. It filled the entire room, a sound of absolute finality. Kamo and Luka, acting on an unspoken command, drew their own weapons, their bodies blocking the only exit.
Jake leveled the gun, the barrel rock steady. Not at the pathetic, weeping Danilov on the floor.
He aimed it directly at Orlov.
"The party has no time for trials for traitors of this magnitude," Jake announced to the silent, captive room, his voice echoing with an authority that was total and terrifying. "Judgment must be swift. Justice must be revolutionary."
He was no longer just a strategist, a manipulator, or a secret purger. In that moment, in front of the entire stunned leadership of the Bolshevik party, he had become its judge, its jury, and its executioner.
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