The pamphlet landed like a fuse.
Kamo wanted a hammer—public, violent, obvious. He wanted corpses in the street and warnings nailed to doorframes. Jake knew better. That was exactly what the pamphlet wanted: proof that the party was brutal and afraid. Proof that Soso had become a tyrant in miniature.
"We will not hang anyone from a lamppost," Jake said in the cellar, voice low and steady. "Public terror is the Tsar's tool. We will be silent. We will be surgical."
A pamphlet was physical: written, printed, distributed. Every physical thing had a chain. That meant someone who wrote it, someone who printed it, someone who slipped it into newspiles or onto benches.
Jake intended to follow the chain and cut it off.
He summoned Luka and Anna. He handed them the pamphlet.
"This is priority," he said. "Anna—your observers watch who places these. Not the readers. The distributors. Descriptions, locations, times. Luka—run those descriptions against the names Danilov gave us. Yagoda's contacts. Every one."
Idealism dissolved. This became counterintelligence—tedious, careful, grinding work. Notes, patterns, verifications. It would wear the enemy down far more effectively than a street beating.
But the pressure outside grew. The pamphlet's poison threaded through taverns and tea houses and into the corridors of power. Stepan Shaumian sent for Jake.
They met in a dusty bookstore, the smell of old paper clashing with the heavy dread between them.
"Soso, your actions were necessary," Shaumian said at once. "I defended them. But this pamphlet… it's creating instability. Doubt is spreading. Men on the Central Committee—good comrades—are asking for proof. They say the party cannot run on one man's secret judgments."
Jake kept his face an unmoving mask.
"They want proof," Shaumian repeated. "They want Danilov presented. They want to hear Orlov's confession from his own mouth."
Danilov—Jake's most dangerous asset and his weakest link. Shattered, terrified, held together only by Jake's pressure. Under the scrutiny of a dozen hardened committee members, he could crack. He could say too much. Or too little. He could unravel Yagoda, the secret ops, Jake's entire structure in one disastrous confession.
"I can't hold them forever," Shaumian said. "They've called a closed session. You must bring Danilov tomorrow night."
Jake left the bookstore into a drizzle that blurred the lamps and smeared the streets with watery gold. Thirty-six hours. He needed a message that silenced the committee before the meeting. He had to cut off the pamphlet's head cleanly and quietly.
Anna's network found the answer by afternoon: a back-alley print shop run by Viktor Malenky, occasional malcontent and illicit printer. Luka cross-checked the name. Danilov had once listed Malenky as someone who took risky, under-the-table jobs.
A public arrest would backfire. A secret execution might leak. Jake needed something deniable—political murder disguised as ordinary street cruelty.
He found Kamo in a smoky tavern, polishing his revolver.
"I need a message sent," Jake said.
Kamo looked up. "What kind?"
"A loud message that makes no sound."
He explained: Malenky must disappear. No witnesses. No trace of them. A robbery gone wrong. A tragedy, but common enough not to raise political alarm.
Kamo nodded slowly. "Robberies happen," he said. "Especially to men who carry their week's pay home after dark."
He left without another word.
That night, Viktor Malenky was found in an alley near his shop, pockets emptied, skull smashed by a loose cobblestone. One more brutal street crime in a brutal city. The police prodded the body, then moved on.
But the right people noticed.
Anyone who had passed a pamphlet through Malenky's hands went quiet. They felt the chill immediately: not a robbery. A warning. The invisible hand of Soso's inner circle crushing dissent before it spread.
By morning, the pamphlets stopped. By noon, the whispers thinned. By nightfall, they were gone.
Jake had won that round.
But the committee still demanded Danilov. And Danilov was still a bomb with a fuse.
Jake sat alone in the cellar as the city slept and felt the fuse burning toward him.
The news of the printer's death moved through the underground like a cold wind. Whispers stopped. Pamphlets vanished. Jake's message had landed—quiet, brutal, believable.
But he felt nothing but a hollow ache. He had bought time. Nothing more.
The committee meeting still loomed. Shaumian still insisted Danilov be presented. Rank-and-file silence meant little. Leadership wanted certainty—political certainty, not street fear.
Jake ran every possible move through his mind until each turned into a trap.
Option one: bring Danilov. Let a dozen suspicious men interrogate a terrified witness. Under pressure he could crack. He could spill truths Jake couldn't afford revealed.
Option two: refuse. Claim Danilov was unstable. That would make Jake look like a man hiding something. It would practically confirm the pamphlet's accusations.
Both ended in disaster.
He needed a third option. Something bold enough to shift the frame entirely.
He opened the locked box of evidence and stared at the Okhrana markers recovered from old drop-boxes. To others, they were strings of meaningless codes. To Jake—trained in modern pattern analysis—they began to speak.
He wrote a short, dangerous message using their structure:
ASSET 12 IS COMPROMISED.
ACTIVATE ASSET 17.
AWAIT CONTACT.
URGENT.
It looked official. And devastating.
He handed it to Luka. "Plant this where a search team might find it. Make it look like an accident. Bring it to Kamo yourself. Be worried. Not terrified. Worried."
Luka nodded and vanished.
An hour later, Kamo burst into the cellar, breathless and angry. "Luka found this. We don't know what it means."
Jake took the paper, studied it with staged confusion, and let the seriousness settle in his face.
"Get Shaumian," he said. "Now."
When Shaumian arrived, Jake laid the message flat on the table.
"I planned to present Danilov tonight," he began. "But this changes everything."
He let the weight of the moment grow.
"This is an Okhrana command," Jake said. "Asset Twelve is Orlov. They know he's gone. They're panicking. They're activating another agent. Asset Seventeen." He lifted the paper. "This was meant for Danilov. They're trying to turn him into something far more dangerous."
Shaumian's face drained. He saw the implications immediately.
Jake pressed on. "If we parade him before the committee now, and the Okhrana are listening, we hand them our most valuable asset. We lose everything."
Then he delivered the pivot he'd crafted.
"We turn him," Jake said. "We make him ours. He returns to them as a double agent. He feeds them whatever we want. He watches their handlers, their movements, their blind spots."
Kamo and Shaumian stared, stunned. The plan transformed the committee's demand into a liability—then into a strategic impossibility. They couldn't demand Danilov publicly anymore without sabotaging their own security.
It was audacious. Daring. A lie woven into a lifeline.
Jake didn't wait for approval.
He walked into the back room where Danilov sat in the dark, gaunt and shaking. The small lamp cast thin shadows across his ruined face.
Jake stepped close.
"You have a new job," he said softly. "You're going to be a hero of the revolution. Whether you want to or not."
Danilov stared at him, hollow-eyed.
The fuse hadn't stopped burning.
Jake had just changed which direction it traveled.