Stolypin's request was a poisoned chalice, an order that was impossible to fulfill and fatal to refuse. Jake paced the cramped confines of his London room, a caged wolf chewing on the bars of an elegant, invisible trap. How could he fabricate a trial? A formal proceeding was a complex thing, a tapestry of lies that had to be woven with perfect, interlocking threads. The names, the charges, the evidence, the verdict—every single detail had to be plausible, consistent, and, most importantly, unverifiable by any external source.
His mind, a frantic engine of calculation, discarded and formulated plans at a dizzying speed. He could claim the trial records were destroyed for security reasons. Too cowardly. It would signal weakness, a lack of confidence. He could invent a list of obscure, low-level party members as the "judges." Too risky. Stolypin's network was vast; a single one of those names might prove to be a man who was in a different city on the supposed day of the trial, and the entire fiction would collapse.
No. The lie had to be audacious. It had to be built on a foundation of truth, a twisted reflection of reality that was more convincing than a complete fabrication. He stopped pacing. The solution, he realized, was not to invent new conspirators, but to make his real co-conspirators witting participants in this new, deeper level of deception. The lie had to become a shared, official reality.
He found Stepan Shaumian in the library of a sympathetic British socialist, a quiet sanctuary of books and ideas far from the chaotic din of the Congress. The older man was reading, his brow furrowed in concentration. Jake waited until he was finished before speaking.
"Stepan," he began, his voice low and grave. "A moment of your time. A matter of internal party security has arisen."
Shaumian looked up, his expression immediately wary. He had come to associate this tone in Soso's voice with terrible, necessary things.
Jake did not mention Stolypin. He did not speak of double agents or secret police. He framed the crisis in a language Shaumian, the man of order and process, would understand and appreciate.
"Our actions in Tbilisi," Jake said, choosing his words with care. "The removal of Orlov. The subsequent affair with the traitor Luka. They were necessary. They were decisive. But they were… irregular. They were not sanctioned by any formal party process."
Shaumian nodded slowly. "They were battlefield decisions, Soso. The situation was critical."
"I agree," Jake said. "But the echoes of those decisions are causing… instability. There is grumbling. We have silenced the open dissent, but the questions remain. We acted as a de facto tribunal. But there is no record. No protocol. Nothing to protect us, or the party's own discipline, from future accusations that we acted as rogue agents, as a lawless gang."
He was playing on Shaumian's own deep-seated belief in the party as an institution, a state-in-waiting, which must have its own laws, its own procedures.
"We need to formalize what we did," Jake concluded. "For the historical record. For the sake of party unity. We need to create a post-facto protocol. A formal, written record of the decision-making process that led to the judgment against the traitor Luka. A document that can be filed, sealed, and, if ever necessary, presented as proof that we acted not out of personal malice, but with the grave and sober authority of the party."
Shaumian was silent for a long moment, his gaze distant. He was a man who craved order, who believed in the power of the written word, of resolutions and records. The idea of their brutal, ad-hoc actions being left undocumented, open to misinterpretation and political attack, was deeply unsettling to him.
"A formal record is wise," he finally conceded, his pragmatism winning out over his unease. "It will protect us from future accusations of Bonapartism. What do you propose?"
"I have already drafted a preliminary document," Jake lied. "I require your intellect, your understanding of formal party language, to help me finalize it."
They sat together at a small, secluded table, and for the next two hours, they became historical forgers. Jake, with his perfect memory of the events he now needed to fabricate, provided the "facts." Shaumian, with his mastery of Marxist jargon and bureaucratic language, clothed them in the impenetrable armor of officialdom.
They created a masterpiece of fiction. "The Secret Tribunal on the Case of the Menshevik Agent Luka Mikeladze," the document was titled. It listed the three judges: "Comrade Stalin, representing the Security Committee; Comrade Kamo, representing the Combat Organization; and Comrade Shaumian, representing the Central Committee." It was a perfect, balanced representation of the party's different wings.
They invented the evidence. "Exhibit A: A written communication intercepted from a known Menshevik courier, detailing party secrets that only a member of the inner circle could have known." "Exhibit B: Testimony from a trusted comrade who witnessed Mikeladze in a clandestine meeting with a known Menshevik agitator." They wrote down fictional testimony, created a timeline of Luka's supposed treachery, and drafted a final, damning verdict.
The intellectual, the man of principle, Stepan Shaumian, had now become Jake's active and willing co-conspirator, co-authoring the very lie that Jake needed to feed to the Tsar's secret police. The lie was no longer just in Jake's head; it was now a formal, tangible, and co-signed reality.
As Jake was leaving the library, the precious, fraudulent document tucked safely in his coat, he was spotted by Trotsky. The man's sharp, intelligent eyes missed nothing. He had seen Jake's constant, intense huddles with Krasin, his endless stream of couriers, and now this long, secret meeting with the party's chief intellectual. He fell into step with Jake as they walked down the foggy London street.
"You are a busy man, Comrade Stalin," Trotsky observed, his tone light and conversational, but his eyes were sharp, probing. "One might think you were running a second, more clandestine congress in the shadows of the real one."
"The party's work does not stop for debates," Jake grunted, his pace quickening.
"Indeed," Trotsky mused, easily keeping pace. "You seem to be fighting a war on two fronts. One in the grand hall of the Congress, a war of words and ideas. And another, much quieter war… somewhere else entirely. It must be exhausting."
It was not a direct accusation. It was a pointed, witty observation, a sign that he was being watched, that his frantic activities had not gone unnoticed by a mind just as sharp, if not sharper, than Stolypin's. Trotsky was not an enemy to be fooled with a simple lie; he was a rival who saw the patterns, even if he did not yet understand the full picture.
Jake gave a noncommittal shrug and turned a corner, leaving Trotsky behind in the fog. He had survived Stolypin's brilliant test. He had his forged verdict, his perfect reply. But Trotsky's comment had unnerved him deeply. Just as he felt he had plugged one leak in his crumbling dam, he could feel a new, more dangerous one beginning to spring, this time not from his enemies, but from within his own ranks.