The committee accepted Jake's double-agent plan with almost embarrassing relief. No debate. No probing questions. Just a weary, frightened nod as Shaumian presented the coded note and praised Soso's "brilliant countermeasure." After Orlov's execution, no one in that room wanted to be the one who doubted the man who had proven he could kill quietly and without consequences. Power flowed toward him like water downhill.
But in the damp chill of the wine cellar, the politics meant nothing. All the applause and fear boiled down to one fragile hinge: Danilov.
The terrified man sat on a wooden stool, unbound for the first time in days. He was no longer a prisoner but a tool Jake had to rebuild from scraps. Kamo stood in the corner, arms folded, his silent presence killing any fantasy of escape.
Jake began not with fists, but with facts. "Your Okhrana handler before Orlov took over was Captain Rostov. Tell me about him."
Danilov swallowed. "I—barely knew him. He met me only once—"
Jake cut him off with a sigh. "Rostov drinks expensive Armenian brandy. He keeps a mistress over the bakery on Zubalashvili Street. He steals from the informant fund. That's why your payments were late. Correct?"
Danilov stared as if Jake had peeled the city open brick by brick. Whatever resistance remained in him crumbled instantly.
"Good," Jake murmured. "Now we write your first message."
For an hour the cellar filled with Jake's quiet, deliberate voice. Together they crafted a lie meant to poison the Okhrana's understanding of the revolution: Orlov's "disappearance" framed as an internal purge, Soso portrayed as a rising tyrant, Shaumian painted as a secret rival, the party shown splitting at its seams. A perfect storm of fear, misinformation, and bait.
When it was done, Jake leaned close, voice almost gentle. "You'll deliver this. Word for word. You belong to us now."
Danilov's lip trembled. Jake pressed on.
"And I know what you're thinking. You'll run. You'll talk. But you won't." He let the silence hang, the cruelty deliberate. "Your sister Anya works at the bakery on Madatov Street. Your nephew Misha walks home from Saint Nicholas school every day at four."
Danilov broke. Completely. "I'll do it," he sobbed. "I'll do anything."
Kamo escorted him out to make the drop. Jake stayed behind, staring at his hands—the hands of a man who once lectured teenagers about ethics now used to threaten a child. Disgust flickered. Then, disturbingly, calm. He had crossed another line. He felt nothing stopping him now.
For two days, the cellar held its breath.
Danilov paced like a trapped animal, flinching at footsteps, clinging to Jake with terrified obedience. Kamo simmered with impatience, polishing his revolver again and again. "They're toying with us," he growled. "They'll raid. We should move the arsenal. Move him."
"We do not show fear," Jake said each time, steady but strained. "Panic is a message. We wait."
Even he felt the pressure. Sleep came in ragged scraps. He memorized names, maps of influence, back-alley networks. His brilliant maneuver now felt brittle—balanced on a terrified man's ability to lie correctly.
On the third day, the serpent finally answered.
Luka arrived without expression. "Secondary drop-point," he said. "A note was left."
The cellar snapped to alert. Jake and Kamo fetched the message themselves, taking a twisting route to avoid tails. Under the lantern's pale glow, Jake unfolded the paper. It used the same shorthand as his forged command.
He handed it to Danilov. The man's hands shook violently.
"Read," Jake ordered.
Danilov stammered through it. His face drained white.
"They want to meet me," he whispered. "Face to face."
He read the plain text aloud: MEET US. MIDNIGHT. ST. GEORGE CATHEDRAL. BEFORE THE MAIN ALTAR. COME ALONE.
A cold shiver passed through Jake. This was wrong. Okhrana procedure was dead drops, not meetings in sanctuaries. This was the opposite of a cleanup—this was evaluation.
"They're going to kill me," Danilov choked. "They never do this. Never."
Kamo slammed his fist down. "I knew it. It's a trap. We don't send him."
Jake's voice cut through the panic. "If they wanted him dead, they'd kill his sister. Quietly. Efficiently. No message. No meeting." His mind raced. "This isn't elimination. This is a test. Someone from the capital—someone trained—is checking whether he's still theirs."
The logic was unshakeable. If Danilov didn't appear, they would know he'd turned. If he did appear and cracked under interrogation, everything Jake built would collapse—along with Danilov's family, their cell, the entire counter-intelligence structure.
It was checkmate. He needed a way to be inside the meeting without being seen. To control every reaction, every twitch of Danilov's broken frame.
Then a reckless idea bloomed—audacious, absurd, dangerous.
He turned to Luka. "I need a list of every priest, deacon, and choir boy at St. George Cathedral. Names, schedules, descriptions."
Luka blinked. "Why?"
Jake didn't answer. He turned to Kamo.
"Find me a small choir boy's robe."
The cellar shifted from fear to a new kind of urgency.
As the men scrambled, Jake's mind tightened around the plan forming in the dark: if Danilov had to go into the lion's den, Jake would be in the shadows—close enough to intervene, invisible enough to survive. The cathedral's maze of alcoves and confessionals, the dim candlelight, the choir loft overlooking the altar—he could use all of it.
The Okhrana thought they'd set the terms of this meeting.
They hadn't.
Jake Vance—Soso, the new shadow in the revolution—intended to walk into St. George Cathedral disguised as a boy in a choir robe, unseen and unsuspected, guiding Danilov with invisible cues, ready to act if a single word went wrong.
He had become his own kind of monster.
And the city, watching from the dark, had begun to believe in him.
Not out of love.
Not out of loyalty.
Out of fear.
History wasn't just looking back at him anymore.
It was starting to follow.