The hammer of the Nagant was cocked, a black steel thumb pointed at the heavens. In the dead, ringing silence of the print shop, it was the only thing that seemed real. Orlov, his face a twisted mask of hatred and disbelief, opened his mouth to speak, to utter one last curse, one final defiance.
In a last, desperate act of contempt, he spat on the grimy floorboards. "You are the real traitor, Jughashvili!" he snarled, his voice cracking. "A butcher!"
Jake didn't flinch. His eyes, cold and steady, were the last thing Orlov ever saw. He pulled the trigger.
The gunshot in the enclosed space was not a sharp crack. It was a physical explosion of sound, a deafening, wet concussion that slammed into the walls and echoed back, punching the air from everyone's lungs. Orlov was thrown backward as if by an invisible fist, a spray of red mist painting the wall behind him. He collapsed to the floor in a boneless heap, his final act of defiance ending in a pathetic, undignified sprawl.
The silence that rushed in to fill the void was heavier, more profound than the noise it replaced. It was a silence thick with the smell of gunpowder and the coppery tang of fresh blood. The dozen members of the Central Committee were frozen, statues in a tableau of shock and horror. Some stared at the body, others at Jake, their faces pale, their mouths agape. They had spoken of revolutionary justice in the abstract for years. They had just witnessed it in its most brutal, personal, and final form.
This was the moment. The pivot point upon which his entire future, and theirs, would turn. Jake did not show remorse, regret, or even the slightest tremor of hesitation. He held his position for a long, deliberate second, the smoking gun still aimed at the space where his enemy had stood. Then, with a calm, steady hand, he lowered the revolver. Smoke curled from the barrel, a thin grey ghost in the lantern light.
"The cancer has been excised," he announced, his voice cutting through the ringing in their ears. It was not the voice of a man who had just committed murder. It was the voice of a surgeon who had just completed a difficult but necessary operation. "Now," he continued, his gaze sweeping over their stunned faces, "we save the body."
His sudden, sharp pivot from executioner to commander was a masterful stroke of psychological warfare. He gave them no time to process the horror, no space to question the act. He immediately presented them with the next, more pressing crisis: the impending massacre at the rail yard.
He didn't ask for permission. He didn't form a committee. He gave orders.
He pointed a finger, still grimy with gunpowder residue, at a wiry man with an ink-stained collar, the party's logistics expert. "Nikolay," Jake commanded, his voice sharp. "The train from Moscow. I want the manifest, and I want it ten minutes ago. I need to know the exact car, the exact markings on the barrels. Find the manifest or find the man who has it."
Nikolay, who had been staring at Orlov's body with wide, horrified eyes, flinched as if struck. He nodded dumbly, then scrambled out of his chair, galvanized into action.
Jake's finger moved to another man, a former telegraph operator. "Semyon. Get a message to our men at the rail yard. The rendezvous for the arms shipment has been compromised. The plan is aborted. No one moves on that cargo until they receive a direct, authenticated command from me. From me, personally. Use the emergency authentication codes. Go. Now."
Like Nikolay, Semyon moved without question, the clarity of a direct order a lifeline in the chaotic sea of what had just happened. Jake was not just seizing control; he was creating order out of the bloody chaos he himself had unleashed. He was demonstrating that while his methods were brutal, they were brutally effective, and that he was the only one in the room with a plan to survive the night.
The key, however, was political legitimacy. His actions were those of a tyrant, a man executing a coup. He needed an endorsement, a seal of approval from someone the others respected. His eyes found Stepan Shaumian.
The intellectual was pale, his hands gripping the edge of the table, but his eyes were clear. He looked from the cooling body on the floor to Jake's cold, commanding presence, and he did the revolutionary arithmetic. He saw not just a killer, but the man who had, at immense personal risk, exposed a plot that would have annihilated them all. He saw the man who was, at this very moment, the only thing standing between them and a historic catastrophe.
Slowly, deliberately, Shaumian pushed his chair back and stood up. All eyes turned to him. "Comrade Soso is right," he declared, his voice steady and firm, lending his immense credibility to the bloody act. "He has done a terrible, necessary thing tonight. This man," he gestured to Orlov's body with a flicker of disgust, "would have sent us all to our graves tomorrow. The party, the entire revolution in Georgia, owes Comrade Soso its life. We will follow his lead."
It was the benediction Jake needed. The tension in the room shifted. The raw horror began to recede, replaced by a grim, fearful acceptance. They were all complicit now. The execution was no longer just Jake's act; it was the committee's.
Jake gave Shaumian a brief, almost imperceptible nod of acknowledgment before turning to the final, chilling pieces of business. He gestured with his revolver towards the whimpering, terrified Danilov, who had huddled himself into a corner, trying to make himself invisible.
"This one is now our most valuable asset," Jake said, his voice devoid of any emotion. "He doesn't just know Orlov's plans. He knows their methods. Their contacts. Their codes. He knows the operational details of the Okhrana from the inside." He turned to Kamo, whose eyes were still wide with a mixture of shock and awe. "Take him back to the cellar. He is no longer a prisoner to be interrogated for a confession. He is a resource to be managed. Get every piece of useful intelligence out of him. We will bleed him dry."
Kamo nodded, his purpose restored. He grabbed the whimpering Danilov and hauled him from the room.
Finally, Jake's gaze fell upon the body of Orlov, a messy, inconvenient problem on the floor. "And get rid of this," he ordered the remaining men. "Take it out the back. Take it to the river. Weigh it down. There will be no body. No funeral. No martyr."
He looked at the shocked faces of the committee members, his expression as hard and final as a death warrant. "As of this moment, Comrade Orlov has vanished. Another tragic victim of the Okhrana he so secretly and loyally served."
He was not just killing his enemies anymore. He was erasing them from history itself.
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