The office of the Deputy Minister of the Interior in St. Petersburg was a grand, cavernous affair of dark, polished wood, ornate maps, and the suffocating silence of absolute power. Pyotr Stolypin stood by the tall window, looking down at the unceasing, orderly flow of carriages on the street below. He was a man who appreciated order. And the recent events in the Caucasus were a discordant, chaotic note in the symphony of his meticulously managed state.
His chief intelligence aide, a thin, severe man named Colonel Sazonov, entered the room, his footsteps silent on the thick Persian rug. He held two message folders in his hand. "Sir," he began, "two priority reports have arrived from the Tbilisi directorate within the last hour. They seem… related."
Stolypin turned from the window, his expression impassive. He took the first folder. It was a field report, crisp and military in its language. He read it quickly. "During the chaotic retreat of the Bolshevik expropriators from Erevan Square, our agents successfully apprehended a high-value target. Subject is Luka Ivanovich Mikeladze, a known associate of the Bolshevik leadership circle under the operative known as 'Soso'. Subject has been secured and is currently undergoing interrogation."
Stolypin's expression did not change. It was a minor victory in a larger, embarrassing failure, but a victory nonetheless. A captured senior operative was always a valuable source of intelligence. He opened the second folder. This one contained a decoded message from their prized, high-level asset inside the Bolshevik committee, the man known as "The Accountant," whose reports were routed through the double agent, Danilov. Stolypin read the second message, and for the first time that day, a flicker of genuine, intellectual interest appeared in his cold, intelligent eyes.
URGENT OPERATIONAL UPDATE, the asset's message began. A CRISIS HAS DEVELOPED. MY LEADER, SOSO, HAS UNCOVERED A HIGH-LEVEL TRAITOR WITHIN HIS OWN INNER CIRCLE. A MAN NAMED LUKA MIKELADZE.
Stolypin paused, re-reading the name. Luka. The same man his field agents had just captured. The timing was… remarkable.
EVIDENCE SUGGESTS LUKA HAS BEEN SECRETLY WORKING FOR THE MENSHEVIKS, the message continued, FEEDING THEM OUR PLANS AND ATTEMPTING TO SOW DISCORD… SOSO HAS ORDERED A SECRET INTERNAL PARTY TRIAL TO EXPOSE AND EXECUTE HIM… I HAVE BEEN TASKED TO BE PART OF THE TEAM GUARDING THE PRISONER… THIS WILL ALLOW ME TO GAIN SOSO'S ULTIMATE TRUST.
Colonel Sazonov, watching his superior's face, ventured a comment. "Sir, it seems our asset's intelligence is faulty. The man, Luka, is in our custody, not his. Perhaps this 'Soso' has discovered the leak and is feeding our asset misinformation."
A lesser man would have agreed. A lesser man would have seen the contradiction as a sign of failure, of a compromised network. But Pyotr Stolypin was not a lesser man. He placed the two reports side-by-side on his vast, polished desk. He saw not a contradiction, but a fascinating, complex problem in human strategy.
"No, Colonel," Stolypin said, his voice a low, thoughtful murmur. "The timing is too perfect. Our asset's message was sent before our field agents reported the capture. He is reporting on an internal Bolshevik matter he could not possibly know was about to become an external one."
He began to pace the room, his mind sifting through the possibilities with the cold precision of a master chess player.
One: It was an astronomical coincidence. He dismissed this immediately. He did not believe in coincidences.
Two: His asset was incredibly well-informed, reporting on a secret trial just as the subject of that trial was accidentally captured. Plausible, but unlikely.
Three: This was not a coincidence at all. This was a deliberate move. This Bolshevik leader, this "Soso," was a far more sophisticated player than he had imagined. Perhaps the man knew his operative was about to be captured. Perhaps he had even allowed it. And perhaps this message, this pre-emptive branding of the captured man as a "Menshevik traitor," was a deliberate, calculated move to discredit the prisoner before he could even speak. A poisoned well.
Stolypin stopped pacing. He felt a thrill of pure, intellectual respect for his unseen adversary. This was not the work of a common bomb-thrower. This was the work of a mind that was as cunning and ruthless as his own.
"This is no longer a simple interrogation of a prisoner, Colonel," Stolypin said, his decision made. "This is now an interrogation of our opponent's strategy." He turned to Sazonov, his eyes alight with a cold, predatory fire. "Send a directive to the Tbilisi headquarters immediately. They are to proceed with the interrogation of Luka Mikeladze. Use every method at their disposal. But," he paused, emphasizing the critical point, "they are to operate under the assumption that everything the prisoner says is a lie. A carefully constructed fiction designed to sow discord, as our asset has warned. I want every word he says recorded. I am no longer interested in the 'truth.' I am interested in what lies this 'Soso' wants us to hear."
The scene shifted to the brutal, sweat-soaked reality of an Okhrana interrogation cell in Tbilisi. Luka hung from the ceiling by his wrists, his body a canvas of bruises and welts. He was a brave man, a man of deep conviction, and he had resisted for two days. He had given them nothing but his name and his contempt.
But the body has limits that the will cannot overcome. Under the relentless, scientific application of pain, he finally broke.
"Alright… alright…" he gasped, his voice a raw, broken thing. "I will talk…"
The chief interrogator, a brutish man with a scarred face, nodded to his subordinate, who prepared a pen and paper. "Tell us about your leader," the interrogator grunted. "This Soso."
And so, Luka began to talk. He told them everything. The complete, unvarnished, and utterly fantastic truth. He spoke of Soso Jughashvili, the man who had seized control of the party. He spoke of Orlov's execution. He spoke of the sacrifice of the informant, Fikus. He spoke of the brilliant, ruthless man from the future who was pulling all the strings.
And most importantly, he told them about Danilov. "He is not your asset!" Luka cried, his voice filled with a desperate, urgent need to make them understand. "He is one of ours! He was an assassin we captured! Soso turned him! Everything he sends you is a lie, a script written by Soso himself!"
The interrogators listened patiently, their pens scratching across the paper. They wrote down every word. And, thanks to the directive from St. Petersburg, they heard it all through the perfect, distorting filter of Jake's brilliant lie.
Luka's confession, the absolute, verifiable truth, was so grand, so intricate, so perfectly conspiratorial, that it sounded exactly like the kind of wild, elaborate fabrication a desperate man would invent to save his own life. More than that, it sounded exactly like the kind of story a secret Menshevik agent would concoct to sow chaos and make the Okhrana suspect their most valuable Bolshevik asset. Every truth Luka told only served to confirm the fiction Jake had so carefully planted. His every word of testimony was, ironically, a testament to his own treachery.
Later that night, the chief interrogator in Tbilisi finalized his report for St. Petersburg. He read over Luka's confession one last time and shook his head in weary contempt.
"The prisoner Mikeladze has broken," he wrote. "He has confessed to a wild, unbelievable conspiracy theory implicating our asset and painting his leader Soso as a master manipulator of impossible genius. This narrative aligns perfectly with the asset's own warning that Luka is a designated traitor attempting to sow internal discord on behalf of the Mensheviks. His testimony is therefore deemed to be worthless as fact, but provides a fascinating insight into the complex and deceitful nature of Bolshevik internal propaganda."
Jake's gambit had worked perfectly, at a cost he could not yet fully comprehend. Luka, in telling the absolute truth, had damned himself completely, his sacrifice rendered meaningless, his name forever branded as a traitor by the very enemy he was trying to expose.