The main Bolshevik safe house was a pressure cooker of tense, simmering silence. The news of Shaumian's transfer to the Metekhi Citadel had settled over the men like a shroud. The waiting was the worst part. They were soldiers without an order to attack, revolutionaries forced into a state of passive anxiety. They looked to Kamo for direction, and Kamo, in turn, looked to the closed door of the room where Soso sat with the strange woman, Kato.
Jake, for his part, was engaged in his own quiet war. He sat across from Kato, forcing himself to drink the tea she had poured, the silence between them thick with unspoken questions and unbridgeable distance. He was trying to be the man she remembered, but the mask was ill-fitting, the performance strained. He could feel the cold, detached strategist warring with the guilty, cornered Jake Vance. Every moment spent with her was a moment he wasn't focused on the crisis, a moment of weakness he couldn't afford.
The tension was finally broken when the door creaked open. It was Sandro, Kamo's lieutenant, his face grim but his eyes holding a new, electric spark. He held a small, crumpled piece of paper.
"A message," Sandro said, his voice a low, excited whisper. "From our man inside Golovin Avenue. It just came through."
Jake was on his feet in an instant, the cup of tea forgotten. He took the paper and his encryption key, his movements sharp and precise. Kato watched him, her expression a mixture of fear and fascination. She was seeing the other man now, the commander, the conspirator.
He decoded the message in under a minute, his eyes scanning the symbols, his mind racing. He read it aloud for Kamo, who had entered the room behind his lieutenant.
"He's in," Jake translated, his voice a flat, controlled monotone. "Held for three hours. Multiple interrogators, including Volkov. The story is holding. Local directorate is in a state of 'complete institutional panic.' Shaumian's indictment has been officially suspended pending investigation. Morozov has telegraphed St. Petersburg for instructions."
He looked up from the paper. Kamo stared at him, his mouth slightly agape, a look of sheer, dumbfounded awe on his hardened face. It was one thing to be given the insane order. It was another thing entirely to hear that the madness had actually worked.
"Soso," Kamo breathed, the name a mark of deepest respect. "You magnificent bastard. You did it. You actually did it."
A slow, cold smile spread across Jake's face. It was not a smile of joy or relief. It was a smile of pure, unadulterated intellectual triumph. The feeling that washed over him was more potent, more intoxicating than anything he had ever experienced. His victory in London, manipulating Trotsky and impressing Lenin, was a simple political maneuver by comparison. This was something else entirely. He had not just outmaneuvered a political rival. He had resurrected a dead man, bent the laws of reality through sheer force of will, and brought the Tsar's dreaded secret police to its knees with a lie. He had conceived an impossible plan and had executed it flawlessly.
In his mind, he saw Stolypin in his grand St. Petersburg office, receiving the panicked telegram from Tbilisi. He imagined the man's shock, his confusion, his fury. The feeling was god-like. They are playing checkers, he thought, the hubris a warm, exhilarating rush. I am playing a different game entirely, a game with my own rules.
Kato, watching him, saw the smile and she shivered. It was not the smile of her husband. It was the smile of a predator, of a wolf that has just tasted blood. She saw in that expression the vast, cold distance that had opened up between them.
The moment of triumph was fleeting. The wheels of the Russian state, though momentarily thrown into chaos, moved quickly. A few hours later, as dusk began to settle over the city, another message arrived. This one was not from their informant inside the Okhrana. It came through a different channel, a contact who worked as a typesetter for the Tiflissky Listok, the city's main newspaper. The message was marked with the highest level of urgency.
Jake decoded it, his triumphant mood evaporating as he read the first few words. The cold smile on his face vanished, replaced by a look of stone. The blood drained from his face.
"What is it?" Kamo asked, seeing the change.
Jake read the message aloud, his voice now tight with a controlled fury. "St. Petersburg has responded. Stolypin is not burying the story. He's weaponizing it. He has scheduled an immediate, unprecedented press conference for all foreign and domestic journalists in St. Petersburg. His office has already released a statement to the wire services."
He took a breath and read the statement. "'In a stunning victory for law and order, Bolshevik terrorist leader Luka Mikeladze, long believed to have been brutally 'purged' by his own comrades for ideological dissent, has bravely escaped his captors and sought the protection of the state. He will give a full and unvarnished account of the Bolsheviks' lawless, gangster-like methods at a press conference tomorrow.'"
Silence. The weight of Stolypin's counter-move settled over the room. It was a strategic thunderbolt, a brilliant, vicious riposte that was as unexpected as it was devastating.
Kamo was the first to explode. He slammed his fist against the wall, the impact shaking a framed picture of Karl Marx. "What is this madness?! That bastard! We saved Shaumian only to make the entire party look like a gang of murderous thugs who can't even kill a man properly? He's turned your ghost into his star witness against us!"
Jake's mind was racing, grappling with the sheer, breathtaking genius of his opponent's move. He had made a catastrophic miscalculation. He had planned for Stolypin to react like a policeman, like a bureaucrat. A policeman's instinct when faced with an embarrassing contradiction is to cover it up, to hide the problem, to quietly release Shaumian and make the whole mess go away.
But Stolypin had not reacted like a policeman. He had reacted like a master propagandist. He had recognized in Jake's perfect lie a greater, more powerful truth he could exploit: the truth of Bolshevik ruthlessness. He had ignored the tactical embarrassment of the failed murder charge and had seized the strategic narrative. He was holding up Pyotr Dolidze to the entire world as proof that the revolutionaries were not noble idealists, but a band of cutthroats who murdered their own. Jake had not just freed his man; he had handed his enemy a weapon of mass political destruction.
Before he could even begin to process the long-term strategic disaster, a third message arrived. A young runner, breathless and terrified, burst into the room.
"Raids!" the boy gasped. "Mass raids! All over the city! The Okhrana is hitting houses everywhere! Not just our known addresses! They're using the 'search for Mikeladze's kidnappers' as a pretext for a city-wide purge! It is chaos!"
Jake's blood ran cold. The final piece of Stolypin's plan slammed into place. It was a three-pronged attack. Free Shaumian, but use the "victim" to win the propaganda war, and use the propaganda as a pretext to launch a massive, crushing sweep of the city's revolutionary underground.
He looked at Kamo, his eyes hard. "The main safe house?"
Kamo's face was grim. "It's a primary address. The Okhrana has known about it for months. They tolerate it as a way to keep tabs on us. But tonight… tonight it's compromised. We have to evacuate. Now."
The strategic chess match was over. It had been a feint. The real attack was this, a brutal, overwhelming show of force. And as the reality of the situation crashed down on him, Jake's mind, filled with propaganda and troop movements, flashed to a single, terrifying image: Kato, sitting in the next room, her face pale with fear.
His grand, god-like gambit to save one comrade had just placed his only personal anchor, the last remnant of his own soul, directly in the line of fire.
He did not hesitate. The grandmaster vanished, replaced by the cornered fugitive. His voice, when he spoke, was a cold, sharp bark of command.
"Evacuation protocols. Now," he snapped at Kamo. "Burn all documents. Scatter to the tertiary locations. Tell the men to travel in pairs, no larger. You and I will handle the rear guard." He turned, his eyes locking onto the door of the room where Kato was waiting. "I will get her."