The air in the Congress hall was so thick with tension it felt like a physical weight. Every delegate, from the most senior ideologue to the youngest party worker, understood the gravity of the moment. The dry, procedural language of the statutes—"democratic centralism," "party discipline," "factional rights"—was the bloodless battlefield upon which the soul of the revolution was being contested. A victory for Lenin meant a party forged into a weapon: sharp, centralized, and obedient. A victory for the Mensheviks meant a party of broad consensus: democratic, argumentative, and, in Jake's opinion, doomed to glorious failure.
Leon Trotsky stood, a solitary, commanding figure amidst the sea of anxious faces. He let the silence hang, a showman milking the drama of the moment. His gaze swept across the hall, acknowledging Lenin's hard stare and Martov's expectant look with equal, regal indifference. He was not a man to be swayed by the hopes of others; he was a force unto himself.
When he finally spoke, his voice was not the thunderous roar of the public orator, but a clear, cutting, and intensely focused tone aimed directly at the bloc of delegates who looked to him for guidance.
"Comrades," he began, "we have spent weeks debating the architecture of our future. We have heard passionate arguments for a party that reflects the spontaneous, democratic will of the proletariat. A noble ideal." He paused, letting the Mensheviks feel a brief surge of hope. "We have also heard the call for a party of iron discipline, a vanguard capable of decisive action in a time of war. A necessary reality."
He began to walk slowly, his hands behind his back, a professor pacing before his students. "Some see this as a choice between freedom and tyranny. Between the soul of the movement and the cold mechanics of power. This is a false dichotomy. It is the sentimentalism of the intellectual, divorced from the brutal facts on the ground."
Jake watched, a silent observer in the back. This was a masterclass. Trotsky was not announcing a crude political betrayal. He was providing his followers with a powerful, intellectually satisfying justification for it. He was giving them a shield of ideology to hide the grubby reality of the deal made on the riverbank.
"The question before us is not what kind of party we desire in a perfect world, but what kind of party is required to win in this one," Trotsky continued, his voice rising in passion. "Our enemies are not a debating society. The Tsar's Okhrana does not operate by committee vote. The capitalists' state machine is a monolithic engine of oppression. To fight a disciplined army with a disorganized militia is not democratic—it is suicidal."
He stopped and turned, his eyes locking onto his followers. "Therefore, I say this: paralysis is the true enemy of revolution. Endless debate, factional bickering, the inability to commit to a single, unified course of action—this is the disease that will kill us long before the Tsar's hangmen get their chance. We must choose revolutionary effectiveness over procedural purity. We must forge a sword, not a discussion forum."
He did not explicitly say "Vote for Lenin's statutes." He didn't need to. He had reframed the entire debate. The choice was now between victory and impotence. He concluded with a final, ringing declaration, "I vote for a party that can win!" and sat down.
A wave of murmurs swept through the hall. Martov's face had gone from confident to ashen. He saw the ground crumbling beneath his feet. Lenin, by contrast, remained perfectly still, but a single muscle twitched in his jaw.
The chairman called for the vote. It was a slow, agonizing process. The head of each delegation stood and declared their bloc's decision. The Bolsheviks voted yes. The Mensheviks voted no. The Bundists abstained. The count was nearly even. It all came down to Trotsky's small, independent faction.
One by one, their representatives stood. "The delegation from Ekaterinoslav votes with Comrade Trotsky... for the statutes." "The delegation from Odessa... for the statutes." With each declaration, a nail was hammered into the coffin of the Mensheviks' hopes.
The final tally was announced. Lenin's platform had passed by a mere handful of votes.
For a moment, there was stunned silence. Then, the Bolshevik side of the hall erupted. It was a roar of relief, of disbelief, of triumphant victory. Men were on their feet, embracing, clapping each other on the back.
The Mensheviks were on their feet for a different reason. Martov, his face contorted with rage and a sense of profound betrayal, pointed a trembling finger at the Bolsheviks. "This is not a victory! It is a coup! A back-room conspiracy! You have hijacked the party with your strong-arm tactics and your secret deals! We will not recognize this fraudulent vote!"
He turned to his faction. "Comrades! We will not be party to this Bonapartist farce!" With that, he and the bulk of the Menshevik delegates stormed out of the hall, their angry shouts echoing in the vaulted ceiling.
The exodus was a shock, but Jake recognized it for what it was: a gift. They had not just lost the vote; they had ceded the entire field. The Fifth Congress, and with it the entire apparatus of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, now belonged to Lenin.
Later that evening, in a small, private room above the pub that had served as their unofficial headquarters, the mood was euphoric. Lenin, usually so reserved and severe, was practically beaming. He moved through the room, accepting congratulations, his mind already racing with the implications of their victory.
He found Jake standing alone by a window, watching the London night. He came and stood beside him, placing a heavy hand on his shoulder.
"Koba," Lenin said, using the familiar Georgian nickname with a newfound warmth. "I watched you, all through this Congress. While the rest of us were making speeches, you were moving in the shadows. You were the one who held the factions together. You were the one who dealt with the traitors. And today… today you delivered a miracle." He leaned closer. "Tell me. How did you do it? How did you turn Trotsky?"
Jake met his gaze. The lie had to be simple, plausible. "Trotsky is an egotist, Vladimir Ilyich. But he is not a fool. I did not appeal to his friendship. I appealed to his ambition. I convinced him that his 'Permanent Revolution' would remain a permanent fantasy without the resources and discipline only our faction can provide."
Lenin let out a booming laugh. "Brilliant! You turned his own vanity against him! You are a man of iron, Koba. A true Bolshevik. While the rest of us are the architects, you… you are the one who understands how to mix the mortar and lay the stones. You are the man this party needs to turn ideas into reality."
The praise landed differently this time. It wasn't just a political victory. It was a deep, personal validation. In his old life, Jake Vance had been a man of modest accomplishments, a teacher respected by some, forgotten by most. Now, in this dark, brutal world, he was being hailed as essential, as a genius of praxis, by one of history's most formidable figures. The "Stalin" persona, the cold, ruthless mask he had been forced to wear, suddenly felt less like a costume and more like a suit of armor. An armor that fit. An armor that was winning him the respect he had never known. The feeling was potent, seductive. It was the feeling of becoming someone.
With practiced humility, he simply nodded. "I serve the party, Vladimir Ilyich."
He excused himself soon after, leaving the celebration behind. The victory in London felt distant, almost unreal, compared to the grim, tangible work that awaited him. Back in his spartan room, a packet of encrypted messages from Tbilisi had arrived, delivered by the party's silent courier network. The grand theater of the Congress was over; it was time to return to the real war, the one fought in back alleys and secret police offices.
He sat at his small table, the single gas lamp hissing softly, and began the meticulous process of decoding. The messages were a litany of grim necessities: a request for funds to buy more Mauser pistols, a report on a new Okhrana surveillance team, a confirmation that the last of the Tiflis gold had been successfully laundered. It was the bloody, mundane accounting of revolution.
He was deep into a message from Kamo, a dry report on combat readiness, when a single passage snagged his attention. It was a brief, almost casual aside, a human detail in a report otherwise filled with numbers and code words.
The boy Giorgi is still with us, Kamo had written. He ran messages during the Tiflis affair. Proved his nerve. He is quiet since the ambush. Follows orders without question. A loyal whelp. I will find a use for him.
The name—Giorgi—hit Jake like a punch to the gut.
Suddenly, the grand hall of the Congress, Lenin's praise, the thrill of outmaneuvering Trotsky—it all evaporated like smoke. In his mind's eye, he saw not the face of a triumphant Lenin, but the wide, terrified eyes of a young boy, his arm slick with blood, his face pale with shock in the aftermath of the brutal ambush Jake himself had engineered.
He had used that boy as bait. He had turned a child into a lure for a kill box. He had known it was a monstrous act, but he had filed it away, another necessary sin on a growing ledger. He had assumed, or perhaps simply hoped, the boy would vanish, melt back into the city, a ghost of a memory.
But the ghost was real. It had a name. And it was still trapped in the machine he had built. Kamo's words, "I will find a use for him," were a death sentence spoken in the casual language of logistics. Jake knew exactly what kind of "use" Kamo found for loyal, traumatized boys. They became bomb-throwers. They became assassins. They became expendable.
The cold, triumphant architect of the London victory was gone. In his place sat Jake Vance, the history teacher, staring at the decoded words on the page, the full weight of his first monstrous act crashing down upon him not as a distant sin, but as a present, ticking danger. His past was not dead. It was alive, it was vulnerable, and it was waiting for him back in Tbilisi.