The acceptance of Jake's double agent gambit by the committee had been a quiet, almost anticlimactic affair. Shaumian, his face a mask of grim necessity, had presented the "discovered" Okhrana directive and Soso's "brilliant" counter-plan. The committee, still reeling from the execution of Orlov and cowed by Jake's display of ruthless efficiency, had accepted it without dissent. To question Soso now was to question the man who held the keys to their survival. He was granted the authority he sought.
But in the cold, damp reality of the wine cellar, political authority was a distant, abstract concept. Here, there was only the fragile, terrifying reality of the plan itself. The entire edifice of Jake's new power, his very life, now rested on his ability to control one broken, terrified man.
Danilov sat on a simple wooden stool, his hands unbound for the first time in days. He was no longer a prisoner to be interrogated, but a puppet to be restrung. Kamo stood in the corner, a silent, brooding monolith, his presence a constant, unspoken threat.
Jake's first task was to complete the demolition of Danilov's will and then rebuild him, brick by brick, into the perfect puppet.
He began not with threats, but with a quiet, methodical display of his own omniscience. "Your Okhrana handler, before Orlov began giving you direct orders, was a police captain named Rostov," Jake stated, his voice calm, conversational. He watched Danilov for any reaction. The man flinched, a subtle but telling movement.
"Tell me about him," Jake continued. "His habits. His weaknesses. His vices."
"I… I barely knew him," Danilov stammered, clinging to his last shreds of defiance. "He was just a voice in a dark alley."
Jake sighed, a sound of weary disappointment. "You are still trying to play the game, Danilov. The game is over. Now, you are merely a piece. Let us try again. Rostov has a fondness for Armenian brandy, the expensive kind. He has a mistress, a seamstress named Irina who lives above the bakery on Zubalashvili Street. He is also skimming money from the informant payment fund, which is why your own payments were often late. Am I wrong?"
Danilov stared at him, his mouth agape. The details were too specific, too personal. It was impossible. This Soso didn't just have spies; he seemed to have access to the very thoughts of the city. He was not a man; he was a force. The last vestiges of Danilov's resistance crumbled into dust. From that moment on, he was a blank slate, ready to be written upon.
"Good," Jake said, his tone devoid of triumph. "Now, we will write your first message back to your masters."
He laid a pen and a piece of paper on the barrel in front of Danilov. For the next hour, Jake dictated, his voice a low, steady murmur. He was not just writing a message; he was crafting a work of fiction, a piece of propaganda designed to be consumed by the most paranoid minds in the Russian Empire.
The message was a masterpiece of misinformation. It began by confirming Orlov's "disappearance," framing it as a shocking and brutal internal power struggle. He is gone, Jake dictated. The Georgian has seized control. The committee is terrified of him. He is consolidating power with a small circle of loyalists.
He then introduced the key piece of misdirection, a fiction designed to send the Okhrana chasing ghosts. The committee is fractured. There is a rival faction, led by the intellectual Shaumian, who are horrified by the Georgian's methods. They see him as a threat to the party's principles. They are working in secret against him. This is our opportunity. The party is on the verge of eating itself alive.
By creating a fictional enemy for himself within the party, he was giving the Okhrana a plausible, attractive narrative to believe in. He was painting himself as a powerful but unstable usurper, besieged by internal enemies—a situation the Okhrana would be eager to exploit, and therefore, less likely to question. He forced Danilov to write it all down in the correct coded shorthand, to learn the feel of the words, to make the lie his own.
The script was ready. Now came the leash.
When the final word was written, Jake stood and walked over to Danilov. He knelt down, so his face was level with the terrified man's. "You will deliver this message," he said, his voice a soft, deadly whisper. "You will follow our instructions to the letter. You will become the perfect, loyal servant of your new masters. Us."
He paused, letting the silence stretch. "And I know you are thinking of betraying us. You are thinking that the moment you are out of this cellar, you will run. You will find your real masters and tell them everything."
He smiled, a cold, thin expression that did not reach his eyes. "But you will not. Because if you ever deviate from the script, if you are a second late for a meeting, if you so much as think a treacherous thought, I will know."
He leaned in closer. "And then my friend Kamo will pay a visit to your sister, Anya, at the bakery where she works on the corner of Madatov Street. She is a good woman. Hard-working. And your little nephew, Misha. He has your eyes. He is a clever boy. He attends the parish school of Saint Nicholas. I know their names. I know their schedules. I know the path Misha walks home from school."
Danilov began to tremble, a low, guttural sound of pure horror escaping his lips.
"They will be perfectly safe, Danilov," Jake concluded, his voice a silken promise of damnation. "They will never even know they are in danger. As long as you are useful. The moment you are not… the moment you become a liability…" He let the threat hang in the air, unfinished, absolute, and infinitely more terrifying for it.
This was the final step. He was no longer just a purger of traitors. He was a man who held the lives of an innocent woman and child as collateral. He was using the tactics of a monster to fight monsters.
Danilov, completely and utterly broken, began to sob, his head slumping forward in defeat. "I will do it," he choked out. "I will do anything you say."
The first message was ready to be sent. The puppet was ready for its first performance. Danilov, under the watchful, silent eye of Kamo, was taken from the cellar to deliver the note to a designated dead drop.
Jake stood alone in the quiet, cold room after they had gone. The weight of his own actions pressed down on him with a physical force. He looked at his own hands, the hands that had just threatened a child. He felt a profound sense of self-loathing, a deep, aching grief for the man he used to be. But the feeling was distant, muted, like a memory from someone else's life. The cold, hard logic of survival, of the mission, was stronger. He had never felt more powerful. And he had never felt more monstrous.
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