The coded reply to Stolypin was a signed death warrant and a declaration of war. By sending it on its long, clandestine journey back to Tbilisi, Jake had set in motion a chain of events he now had to frantically outpace. He had "predicted" the Tiflis bank robbery to the enemy; now, he had to ensure that the robbery actually happened, but in a way that he could control, a way that would allow his men to survive the very trap he himself was helping to set.
History, he knew, was on his side. The 1907 Tiflis bank robbery was a canonical event, a famous and bloody chapter in the Bolsheviks' history. Kamo, back in Georgia, was almost certainly in the final stages of planning it. But there was a problem, a significant complication that Jake's 21st-century knowledge made him acutely aware of.
The Fifth Party Congress, the very one he was attending, had passed a resolution explicitly forbidding armed "expropriations." These actions were deemed too controversial, too much like common banditry, and they alienated potential allies. Lenin, publicly, had supported this resolution to appease the more moderate factions. Privately, Jake knew, he was desperate for the funds and secretly encouraged the very actions he publicly condemned.
Jake couldn't simply send a message to Kamo telling him to proceed. If Kamo were caught, the official party line from London would be to disavow him, to condemn him as a rogue agent acting against the will of the Congress. Kamo and his men would be hung out to dry, politically and literally.
No, Jake needed sanction. He needed a powerful ally here, in London, someone who could act as a firewall, someone to ensure that when the stolen gold arrived, it would be funneled directly to Lenin's faction, bypassing the official committees and their endless, sanctimonious debates.
He couldn't go to Lenin directly. The man's public position made it impossible. He couldn't go to Zinoviev or Kamenev; they were theorists who were squeamish about the dirty realities of funding a revolution. He needed to find a different kind of man. A man like himself. A pragmatist. A doer.
His historical knowledge provided the name: Leonid Krasin.
Krasin was a phantom at the Congress, a man who operated in the background. He was a brilliant chemical engineer by trade, a respected intellectual, but unlike the others, he was also the Bolsheviks' master of the dark arts. He was their chief fundraiser, their bomb-maker, their logistical genius. Krasin was the man who understood that a revolution was not just an idea, but an enterprise, one that required money, weapons, and a ruthless disregard for bourgeois morality. He was, Jake knew, the secret overseer of all the party's most violent and profitable operations. He was the perfect ally.
Jake arranged a meeting through a trusted intermediary. They met not in a pub, but on a park bench in a dreary, fog-shrouded London square. Krasin was a handsome, well-dressed man with a neatly trimmed beard and the calm, confident eyes of an industrialist. He looked more like a banker than a bomber.
"Comrade Stalin," Krasin began, his voice a smooth, cultured baritone. "I am told you wished to speak with me about a… practical matter."
Jake decided that with a man like Krasin, there was no point in ideological posturing. He would speak the language they both understood: the language of results.
"The party is broke, Comrade Krasin," Jake said bluntly. "We are spending our days arguing about resolutions that we do not have the funds to implement. Our talk is grand, but our pockets are empty. This must change."
Krasin smiled faintly, a flicker of amusement in his eyes. "An astute observation. And you have a solution, I presume?"
"I do," Jake said. "My organization in Tbilisi has the means, the discipline, and the nerve to secure a massive financial windfall for the party. An operation that would fund our entire apparatus for years to come. Enough to print every pamphlet, bribe every official, and buy every rifle we need."
He was, of course, talking about the bank robbery. Krasin's smile didn't falter, but his eyes grew sharper, more focused. He knew exactly what kind of "operation" Jake was talking about.
"Such operations are… complicated," Krasin said, his tone neutral. "The Congress has forbidden them. If your men are caught, the party will disavow them. The Mensheviks would have a field day."
"That is why I have come to you," Jake said, leaning in. "I do not need the Congress's permission. I need your unofficial sanction. I need a man with your expertise to handle the… dispersal of the funds once they are secured. I need to know that the fruits of my men's risk will not get caught up in endless committee debates or fall into the hands of the sentimentalists. I need to know that the money will go directly to where it is needed most: to Comrade Lenin's faction, to the real work of the revolution."
He was proposing a secret conspiracy within the party, a pragmatic alliance between the man who could get the money and the man who knew what to do with it. He was offering Krasin a partnership that bypassed the talkers and focused on pure, practical results.
Krasin was silent for a long time, studying Jake's face. He was a shrewd judge of character, and in this intense, hard-eyed Georgian, he saw a mirror of his own pragmatism. He saw a fellow professional in a world of amateurs.
"Your reputation precedes you, Stalin," Krasin finally said. "They say you are a man who gets things done. It seems they are right." He extended a hand. "You secure the funds. Get them out of the country. I will handle the rest. I will ensure they reach the correct destination."
The deal was struck. The handshake was firm. A secret, powerful alliance had been forged on a park bench in the London fog.
Jake returned to his small, cheap boarding house room, his mind already racing ahead to the final, critical step. He now had the political cover he needed. He had a plan to deal with Stolypin. Now, he had to set the plan in motion.
He sat down with his cipher book and began to compose a new, top-secret message for Kamo, a message that would light the fuse on one of the most famous and bloody bank robberies in revolutionary history.
"LIQUIDATE THE STATE BANK ASSETS," he wrote, using the cold, impersonal language of a military commander. "PROCEED WITH OPERATION BEAR. KRASIN WILL HANDLE DISPERSAL FROM EUROPEAN SIDE."
He paused, the pen hovering over the paper. He was not just authorizing a historical event. He was now actively participating in it, shaping it. He had a responsibility to his men, a duty to give them a fighting chance to survive the trap he himself had set. He had to warn his past self, through Kamo, of the danger to come.
He added a final, cryptic line. "EXPECT HEAVY RESISTANCE. ENEMY HAS FOREKNOWLEDGE. PROCEED ACCORDINGLY. TRUST NO ONE."
He encoded the message. He was now playing a terrifying, three-dimensional chess game across both time and space. He was using the Tsar's Prime Minister, the Bolsheviks' greatest theorist, a master bomb-maker, and his own past, historical self as unwitting pieces in his grand, desperate gambit. It was a plan of such breathtaking complexity and arrogance that a single miscalculation would result not just in his own death, but in a historical catastrophe. And he had never felt more alive.
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