The journey to St. Petersburg was a slow, rattling crawl into the heart of the beast. For three days, Jake sat on a hard, third-class train bench, disguised as a provincial grain merchant, the smell of cheap tobacco and unwashed bodies a constant, cloying presence. He was a ghost moving towards the center of a spider's web, and he was doing it by choice.
Kamo had thought him insane. "You cannot go," he had insisted, his voice a low, desperate rumble. "It is a trap. He will have you in chains before you even see the city limits. Let me go. Let me take a team. We will find a way to silence the ghost and his family."
But Jake had been adamant. "You are thinking like a soldier, Kamo," he had replied, his voice quiet but unyielding. "This is no longer a soldier's battle. I cannot win this from a distance. Stolypin has personalized this. He has shown me his hand. I have to sit at his table to see the cards he is not showing me. I have to understand the player, not just the pieces he moves."
His internal monologue was a frantic, chaotic dialogue between terror and exhilaration. It was the single greatest risk he had ever taken. Every police officer at every station, every Okhrana agent on the train, was a potential angel of death. But the move felt necessary, essential. He was like a surgeon who realizes he cannot diagnose a complex cancer from X-rays alone; he has to open the patient up and see the disease for himself.
He arrived in the imperial capital under a sky the color of slate. St. Petersburg was a city of rigid, imposing beauty, its grand avenues and neoclassical facades a world away from the chaotic, sun-baked streets of Tbilisi. It was a city built on a foundation of absolute power, and Jake could feel its oppressive weight in his very bones.
He followed the instructions relayed through their most secure channels. The meeting place was not a dark, fog-shrouded bridge or a fortified government building, as he had expected. It was a discreet but supremely high-class restaurant called L'Étoile, tucked away on a quiet side street. A place where ministers and aristocrats conducted their affairs over caviar and champagne.
A maître d' with an impossibly stiff collar greeted him without surprise. "Monsieur Petrov? Your table is ready."
He was led not into the main dining room, but up a private, carpeted staircase to a secluded chamber known as the 'Sapphire Room.' It was a small, opulent space, dominated by a single round table perfectly set for two with gleaming silver and crystal. The walls were covered in dark blue silk.
Pyotr Stolypin was already there, seated, waiting. He was alone.
He was taller than Jake had imagined, with a statesman's bearing and an air of relaxed, almost casual authority. He was not in uniform, but a perfectly tailored civilian suit. An uncorked bottle of dark red French wine and two glasses sat on the table between them. He smiled as Jake entered, a gesture that was at once welcoming and deeply unsettling.
"Monsieur Petrov," Stolypin said, his voice a smooth, cultured baritone. "Or should I call you Soso? Please, do sit. I took the liberty of ordering a Bordeaux. I find it helps to lubricate the gears of history."
The message was unmistakable. We are not thugs meeting in an alley. We are civilized men. I am in control here.
Jake sat, his body a coiled spring of tension, but he forced his expression to remain impassive. He had to match this performance. He could not be the provincial revolutionary, awed by the trappings of power.
"I prefer a Georgian Saperavi," Jake replied, his voice flat. "But this will do."
A waiter, silent as a ghost, materialized and poured the wine. Stolypin waited until the man had retreated before he spoke again. He did not begin with accusations or threats. He began with a compliment, a verbal dagger wrapped in velvet.
"I must confess, I have been looking forward to this meeting for some time," Stolypin began, swirling the wine in his glass. "One so rarely gets to meet a true artist in your line of work. Most revolutionaries are brutes or bores, consumed with half-baked German philosophy. You, on the other hand… you have a flair for the dramatic."
He took a sip of wine, his eyes, sharp and analytical, never leaving Jake's face. "The affair of the resurrected man," he mused. "A masterpiece of psychological theater. The sheer, beautiful cruelty of it. Tell me, was it your intention to drive the poor creature mad from the start, or was that merely a fortunate and spectacular byproduct of your work?"
Jake met his gaze, refusing to be drawn into the role of the villain. He would not be cast as a thug in this man's play. He would match wit for wit, steel for steel.
"Madness is a regrettable but predictable outcome when a man's entire reality is built upon a lie, Prime Minister," Jake replied, his voice cold and steady. "You built the stage. You wrote the script for your star witness. I merely introduced a character from his past who had forgotten her lines. The resulting chaos was… a matter of simple cause and effect."
Stolypin let out a short, appreciative laugh. "Brilliant. You refuse to even accept credit for your own masterpiece. The humility of the true artist."
They fenced like this for several minutes, a dizzying exchange of witty, probing remarks and veiled threats. It was a duel of intellects, each man trying to take the other's measure, to find the cracks in his opponent's armor. Jake had never encountered a mind like this—so sharp, so cynical, so utterly in command. He was playing against a grandmaster who saw the entire board, and it was both terrifying and exhilarating.
Finally, Stolypin set his wine glass down, the crystal ringing softly in the quiet room. "You are, I am sure, aware that I have several dozen agents of my personal guard within a hundred meters of this building," he said, his tone conversational. "I could have you arrested, tried in a secret military court, and hanged before the sun rises. Your revolution would lose its most… creative asset."
Jake took a slow sip of his own wine, letting the silence stretch. He met Stolypin's gaze. "And you, Prime Minister, are surely aware that I am not a fool who would walk into the lion's den without first building a cage around it," he replied, his voice a low, even threat. "My second in command, a man far less interested in conversation than I am, has a sealed set of orders. If I do not report in by an appointed time, those orders are to be opened. They contain a list. A list of names. Governors, police chiefs, industrialists, all across the Caucasus. His instructions are to begin a campaign of targeted assassinations that will make the chaos of 1905 look like a church picnic. The region will become utterly ungovernable. Your political enemies in the Duma will have a field day."
He leaned back in his chair. "So, yes. You can have me hanged. And in return, a fire will be lit in the south that your entire army will not be able to extinguish. It seems we have a state of… mutual assured destruction."
The room was silent. The witty banter was over. The true stakes had been laid bare on the table. In this room, for this moment, they were not statesman and terrorist. They were two equal powers, each with a metaphorical pistol pointed at the other's head.
Stolypin stared at him, his charming demeanor completely gone, replaced by a look of intense, serious calculation. A slow, thin smile spread across his face. It was not a smile of humor, but of genuine, intellectual respect.
"Excellent," he said. "Now we understand each other." He leaned forward, his hands clasped on the table, the mood in the room shifting from a duel to something else entirely. "Let us dispense with the pleasantries. I did not agree to this meeting to admire your handiwork or to threaten you. I agreed because you are the first revolutionary I have ever encountered who seems to understand the true nature of power. Most of your comrades want to burn the world down. You… you want to run it."
His eyes bored into Jake's, searching, probing.
"So tell me, Soso Jughashvili," he said, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. "What is it you really want?"