The feeling of Kato's hand in his was a point of searing heat in the cold calculus of his world. He pulled away, the movement more abrupt than he intended, and she flinched, a flicker of hurt in her eyes.
"I have work to do," he said, the words coming out harsher than he meant. He could not stand here, in the warmth of her concern, while the cold machinery of his plan was still in motion. "Stay here. Do not leave the house."
He turned and walked away, not looking back, feeling her worried gaze on him like a physical weight. He left the main safe house and stepped back into the grey Tbilisi streets, the cool air a welcome shock. His mind was a battlefield. One part was reeling from the emotional confrontation, the guilt and the terrifying surge of protective instinct he felt for Kato. The other, the cold strategist, was already trying to solve the impossible new equation she represented. She was a complication, a vulnerability. And, his mind whispered again with a chilling detachment, a potential asset. The thought made him feel sick with self-loathing.
He pushed it all down, burying it under a layer of ice. He had a task to complete. One monster at a time.
He returned to the secondary safe house on Erevan street. The tomb-like silence was a relief. Kamo stood guard outside the door, his face an unreadable mask of stone. He said nothing, merely nodding as Jake approached.
Jake entered the room. Pyotr Dolidze looked up from the cot. The change in the past hour was unnerving. Left alone, the persona of Luka Mikeladze had not wavered; it seemed to have settled, to have taken deeper root in the hollowed-out shell of the man. The vacant terror in his eyes was gone, replaced by a kind of tragic, fatalistic resolve. The actor was no longer just playing a part; he was living it.
"It is time," Jake said, his voice flat, devoid of the turmoil that raged within him. "The final rehearsal."
He conducted the session with a brutal, detached efficiency. He was no longer a director coaxing a performance. He was a programmer inputting the final lines of code. He made Pyotr recite the details of the fabricated confession, over and over, until the lies flowed with the ease of memory.
"I am Luka Mikeladze. I was a secret sympathizer with the Mensheviks. My Bolshevik comrades discovered my dissent. I feared for my life. I faked my death during the chaos of a police raid. I have been in hiding in the countryside. I have returned to seek the protection of the state from the Bolshevik executioner, Kamo."
Each line was a perfectly crafted piece of disinformation, designed to align with what the Okhrana already believed about the Bolsheviks' internal ruthlessness.
Finally, Jake pulled a small, worn photograph from his pocket. It was a picture of a plain-faced woman with kind eyes, holding two small children. It was a copy of a photo he had found in the real Luka's file.
"This is your wife, Elene," Jake said, his voice soft, almost gentle. It was the most cruel and manipulative tool he had used yet. "And these are your children, Nina and Vasili. They believe you are dead. But you are doing this so that other men, good comrades like Shaumian, can return to their families. You are doing this for them. For the future."
Pyotr took the photograph. His hands, for the first time, were perfectly steady. He looked down at the image of the woman and children he had never met, and his face crumpled. But he did not weep with the despair of Pyotr, the drunkard. He wept with the profound, heartbreaking sorrow of Luka Mikeladze, the husband and father who was about to make the ultimate sacrifice. The transformation was complete. The actor was ready for his final scene.
Jake left him with the photograph and returned to the main safe house, his own soul feeling as hollowed out as Pyotr's.
Kato was waiting for him. She had found his small, spartan room and had tried to bring a touch of life to it. A cloth had been laid on the crude table. A cup of tea was steaming beside a plate of bread and cheese. It was a heartbreakingly normal gesture in a world that was anything but.
He knew, with an absolute certainty, that he had to get her away from Tbilisi. If his plan failed, the city would become a warzone as Kamo launched a real, suicidal rescue. If it succeeded, the Okhrana, humiliated and furious, would tear the city apart looking for the architects of their embarrassment. Her presence here was an unacceptable risk.
"Kato," he said, his voice softer this time, weary. "You cannot stay. In two days, maybe less, this city may become a very dangerous place."
She looked at him, her eyes full of a sorrow that mirrored the one he had just manufactured in Pyotr. "And you? You will be in the middle of it, of course."
"I have to be," he said. "But I have made arrangements for you. There is a small cottage in Borjomi, in the mountains. It is quiet, isolated. A party sympathizer owns it. You will be safe there. Kamo will arrange for a carriage tomorrow morning."
"And you will stay here?" she asked, her voice small. "You will send me away again?"
He looked at her, at the last living link to his own humanity, the only person in the world who did not see him as either a commander or a monster. And an idea, an impulse born not of cold strategy but of a desperate, flickering ember of the man he used to be, took shape. He needed a reason to survive this. Not for a cause, not for history, but for a person. He needed an anchor in the future, a light at the end of this long, dark tunnel.
"Yes," he lied, the word tasting like ash and hope in his mouth. "For now. But once this business with Shaumian is finished… I will come to you in Borjomi. I promise."
Her face changed. A small, fragile smile touched her lips. She did not question the promise. She chose to believe it. "I will wait for you," she whispered.
He had not just sent her away for her safety. He had created a future for himself, a reason to win that was not abstract. He had re-established his own moral anchor, making the stakes of his monstrous gamble higher than he could ever have imagined.
Meanwhile, a thousand miles away, the primary audience for this drama was growing restless. In his St. Petersburg office, Stolypin reviewed the latest reports from Tbilisi with a frown of intellectual curiosity.
"Still no move?" he asked Colonel Sazonov. "No whispers of a rescue? No attempts to contact the prisoner?"
"None, Your Excellency," Sazonov confirmed. "The Bolsheviks have heightened their surveillance around the Citadel, but it seems… performative. As if they want us to see them watching. Other than that, their combat wing has gone completely to ground. It is unnervingly quiet."
Stolypin tapped a long, elegant finger on his desk. "This Soso is more disciplined than I thought. Or more cunning. He is refusing to take the bait. A direct assault is what a common thug would do. He is playing a longer game." He smiled, a thin, wolfish expression. "Very well. Let him wait. The indictment proceeds tomorrow. The pressure will mount. He will be forced to make a move eventually. What is he playing at?"
The grandmaster waited for his opponent to move a piece, completely unaware that the opponent was about to introduce a new piece to the board altogether.
Dawn in Tbilisi. The city was bathed in a thin, grey, pre-morning mist. In the alley behind the safe house on Erevan street, the final act began.
Pyotr Dolidze, now fully inhabiting the ghost of Luka Mikeladze, was dressed in a clean but well-worn coat. His face was a mask of calm, terrified resolve. He looked uncannily like a healthier, more rested version of the man in the photograph.
Jake stood before him. He did not offer words of comfort or encouragement. He gave his actor one final piece of direction. He handed him a small, forged identity document bearing Luka's name.
"When you walk through that door, you are not Pyotr," Jake said, his voice a low, final command. "He is dead. You are Luka Mikeladze. You are a husband and a father. You are a patriot seeking protection from madmen. You are a hero, making a sacrifice. Remember that."
Pyotr—or the man who was now Luka—looked at him, his eyes distant, as if seeing something far away. He nodded once, a short, sharp gesture of acceptance.
Kamo watched from the shadows of the alley, his face grim. The full, insane scope of Soso's plan was now clear to him, and it was a work of genius so profound and so cruel that it chilled him to the bone.
Pyotr Dolidze turned and walked out of the alley. He did not look back. He walked with a steady, determined gait toward the center of the city, toward the lion's den of the Okhrana headquarters. He disappeared into the morning mist.
Jake stood alone, the cold air biting at his skin. He had just sent a man to his certain death to execute a plan of breathtaking cynicism. He should have felt the cold triumph of a grandmaster about to checkmate his opponent.
But he didn't. As he watched the empty space where Pyotr had vanished, his internal monologue was not one of strategic victory. It was a silent, desperate, and entirely irrational prayer from a man who had long since abandoned God. A prayer for the soul of the man he had just sacrificed.
And for the first time, he allowed himself to think of the cottage in Borjomi. Of Kato. Of a life after this. He had given himself something personal to lose again, and in doing so, had made himself more vulnerable than ever before.