The safe house reeked of tanned hides, blood, and victory.
Beneath the furrier's shop, three canvas sacks sat in the corner—heavy, bulging, and worth a fortune. Enough to buy guns, presses, loyalty. Enough to fund a revolution.
But the air wasn't triumphant. It was heavy. Mournful.
Kamo sat on a crate, his face buried in his hands. The usual fire in his eyes was gone, replaced by exhaustion and grief. Four men were dead. Six wounded—one of them wouldn't last the night. Luka, his steady second, was missing. Captured.
They had won. But the victory bled.
After tending to the wounded, Kamo wrote his report. His fingers, black with gunpowder, moved carefully over the cipher sheet.
BEAR SECURED. HEAVY LOSSES. YOUR WARNING SAVED THE REST. LUKA TAKEN.
He sealed it and handed it to the courier. A message for Soso—their unseen commander.
Thousands of miles away, in the damp gray light of London, Jake Vance read the message in silence.
He decoded each line slowly, feeling the meaning settle like a weight in his gut.
The mission had succeeded. The money was theirs.
But the cost.
The cost was real.
He'd sent men to die in a trap of his own making. Men who trusted him. Men who thought he was a prophet, not a liar with a history degree.
And Luka—his quiet, careful lieutenant, the man who knew too much—was in enemy hands.
Jake closed his eyes for a moment. The guilt was sharp, but fleeting. He didn't have time for guilt. He had a part to play.
He straightened, put on the expression of a revolutionary at work, and went to find Leonid Krasin.
He found Krasin in a quiet corner of the Congress hall, leafing through papers.
"Comrade," Jake said softly. "I've received word from Tbilisi. The operation was a success."
Krasin looked up, interest sparking behind his calm eyes. "And the proceeds?"
"Substantial," Jake said. "Enough to fund every pamphlet and every rifle we'll need for the next three years. But we paid for it. Several good men are gone."
He framed it carefully—neither boast nor confession. The price gave weight to the triumph.
Krasin nodded slowly. "The revolution demands sacrifice," he murmured. "And rewards those who deliver results. You've done the party a great service, Comrade Stalin."
Later, when the money quietly reached Lenin, the reaction was predictable. Publicly, he condemned the robbery to placate the Mensheviks. Privately, he was elated.
The funds were a godsend. The party's survival—his faction's survival—was now assured.
And the man who had made it happen, the delegate from the Caucasus, suddenly wasn't just another operative. He was indispensable.
Jake had risen from an obscure provincial to one of Lenin's most valuable men.
But one report wasn't enough.
He had two masters to serve.
Back in his rented room, Jake began composing the second version—the one for Stolypin.
It was a masterpiece of deception.
He wrote as Danilov, the loyal agent reporting a tragedy.
My intelligence was correct. The expropriation occurred at the predicted time and place. The target was the State Bank transfer, as stated.
That line alone secured his credibility. The intel had been accurate. He wasn't to blame.
Then he shifted the blame where it belonged—anywhere but on himself.
However, the revolutionaries were far more prepared and monstrously violent than expected. My warning was not acted upon effectively by the Tbilisi Okhrana. Their response was clumsy. They were outmaneuvered at every turn.
The perfect stroke. Stolypin would hear exactly what he wanted: that the provincial police were fools.
Jake continued, building to the real purpose—the myth of Soso.
This confirms my earlier assessment of the new Bolshevik leadership. The 'Soso' faction is disciplined and strategically brilliant. He is transforming them from disorganized thugs into a professional paramilitary. The failure to destroy him in Tbilisi has only increased his legend. He is now seen as untouchable.
It was a triumph of doublethink.
He'd turned a disaster into proof of his own value, and turned himself—his alter ego—into the monster Stolypin most feared.
He encoded the message, satisfied.
He now held two versions of the same story—one of victory, one of failure—and both made him stronger.
He was about to call for a courier when someone knocked softly on the door.
It was the same young messenger as before. Pale, breathless, eyes wide.
"From Tbilisi, comrade," he whispered. "They say… there were complications during the retreat."
Jake took the note, his fingers suddenly cold. He opened it, scanning the cramped cipher.
Only three words.
THEY TOOK LUKA.
Jake's breath caught.
Luka. The quiet man in the corner of the cellar. The one who'd helped create the Danilov persona. The one who knew everything.
And now he was sitting in an Okhrana cell.
The empire had captured a witness to every secret Jake had built—every layer of his deception.
If Luka talked, the whole structure would collapse.
Jake sat there, frozen, the paper trembling between his fingers.
Across an ocean, in a room filled with smoke and silence, the empire had just reached out and touched him.
And for the first time since arriving in this world, he realized how thin the line was between genius and ruin.