The world, for Jake, had shrunk to the circular view of his binoculars. From his perch in the cold, dusty room of a derelict tenement overlooking the street, he was a god, watching mortals move on a stage of his own design. The grimy glass of the window pane was the only thing separating the conductor from his orchestra. He felt no adrenaline, no fear. Only a profound, unnerving calm. The plan was in motion, a complex machine he had built, and all he had to do now was watch the gears turn.
A thin plume of grey smoke rose from a few blocks away, a dirty finger pointing at the sky. Misha, Jake thought, a flicker of clinical approval passing through him. The first domino. On the street below, he could hear the distant, frantic clang of a fire bell, followed by the sight of a horse-drawn police wagon rattling past, its occupants oblivious, drawn away from their post exactly as predicted.
He panned the binoculars upwards, towards the flat roof of the warehouse opposite. A shape, indistinguishable from a chimney stack to the casual eye, moved with slow, deliberate grace. Kamo. A patient predator settling into his nest. He was the hammer, held in silent suspension, waiting for the signal to fall.
The low, rumbling growl of the armored wagon preceded its arrival. It was an ugly, brutish thing of reinforced steel and thick wood, drawn by two powerful draft horses. It moved with an arrogant, unhurried pace, a mobile fortress of the Tsar's capital. As it rounded the corner, its path was blocked. A flimsy-looking cart, one wheel askew, stood in the middle of the narrow road. Viktor stood beside it, wringing his hands in a passable imitation of a frustrated merchant.
The wagon slowed to a halt, the driver shouting a curse. The plan was holding. The wagon was stationary, vulnerable, precisely on schedule. Two guards, clad in heavy grey coats, dismounted and walked the fifty feet to the bank's entrance, one carrying a leather satchel. The clock was ticking. Three minutes.
Jake's focus narrowed on the two guards who remained with the wagon. The driver was a stout, older man with a magnificent moustache and a bored expression. A known quantity. But the second guard… Jake's blood ran cold. This was not the paunchy, middle-aged veteran their reconnaissance had described. This man was young, perhaps twenty-five, with a lean, hungry look. His eyes weren't scanning the street lazily; they were actively sweeping, assessing. His hand rested, not on his hip, but on the butt of the Nagant revolver holstered there.
A random variable. An unexpected gear in the machine.
Pavel and his two men emerged from the alleyway, moving with a feigned casualness that was screamingly obvious to Jake's trained eye. They were brawlers, trying to act like shadows.
The young guard saw it instantly. His posture changed. He didn't shout. He didn't hesitate. He took a half-step back, using the wagon as cover, and his hand closed around the grip of his pistol. The plan was a breath away from shattering into blood and chaos.
Through his binoculars, Jake saw the guard's knuckles whiten as he began to draw his weapon. Time seemed to stretch, the moment becoming thick and syrupy. He saw Pavel's eyes widen in panic, his attack about to turn into a suicidal charge.
From the warehouse rooftop opposite, a puff of smoke, impossibly small.
The sharp, flat crack of the rifle was shockingly loud in the confined street. It was not a boom; it was a surgical, definitive sound. The young guard stiffened, a look of profound surprise on his face. A small, dark hole appeared on the collar of his thick grey coat. He didn't fall. He simply folded, collapsing in on himself like a marionette with its strings cut, his unfired pistol clattering onto the cobblestones.
One shot. One threat eliminated. It was brutal. It was shocking. It was ruthlessly, perfectly efficient.
The driver stared, his mouth agape, frozen in disbelief. Pavel's men, jolted from their fear by the sudden violence, surged forward, their knives flashing in the pale light.
Then, the second complication.
A door to a baker's shop creaked open. A woman, her arms laden with a wrapped loaf of bread, stepped out. She saw it all in a single, horrifying instant: the masked men, the fallen guard, the driver raising his hands in terror. Her eyes went wide. The bread fell from her grasp. She opened her mouth and let out a single, piercing scream that tore through the sudden silence.
It was a sound of pure, primal terror, a beacon that would bring every policeman within a quarter mile running.
Viktor, the hothead, the weak link, panicked. The drill, the plan, the cold logic Jake had beaten into him—it all evaporated in a cloud of adrenaline. He saw the screaming woman not as a complication, but as a threat. He broke from the others, his knife raised, lunging toward her to silence the sound at its source.
From his perch, Jake watched the scene unfold, his mind a whirlwind of cold calculation. There was no horror, no moral debate. The ghost of Jake Vance did not cry out for the woman's life. The mind of Stalin saw only a tactical equation.
Scream brings the local patrol. Predictable response. Manageable.
A dead civilian, a woman, stabbed in the street? That's not a robbery anymore. That's a sensation. A murder. The Okhrana will put their best on it. Stolypin's hounds. It will bring a level of heat we cannot survive.
He did not weigh the woman's life against Viktor's rage. He weighed the quality of the inevitable police investigation.
He leaned down to the speaking tube he had rigged, a simple length of pipe that ran up to Kamo's position. He put his lips to the cold metal and spoke a single, quiet command, a voice from the heavens delivered with the dispassionate tone of a man ordering tea.
"Viktor. Leash him."
The rifle on the rooftop cracked a second time.
The bullet did not strike the woman. It did not strike Viktor. It slammed into the cobblestones an inch from Viktor's right foot. A spray of stone chips and dust peppered his legs. The sound, so close, so violent, was like a physical blow. He froze mid-stride, his lunge aborted, his head snapping up towards the rooftop in confusion and terror. The message was unmistakable, delivered with a gram of lead. The plan is absolute. You are not.
The moment of frozen chaos was all Pavel needed. He smashed his fist into the side of the driver's head, sending the man slumping to the ground. He and his other man heaved the heavy, iron-banded payroll box from the wagon. It landed on the street with a heavy, satisfying thud.
The first, distant blast of a police whistle cut through the air.
Their time was up.
Hoisting the box between them, Pavel's crew did not run randomly. They moved with the purpose Jake had drilled into them, vanishing into a pre-planned escape route, a labyrinthine alley that would lead them into the city's anonymous tenement maze. Viktor, pale and shaken, scrambled after them.
The street was suddenly empty. It was left with a broken cart, a fallen loaf of bread, two unconscious guards, and one dead one. The woman was still standing there, her hand clamped over her mouth, her body trembling uncontrollably.
In his dusty room, Jake slowly lowered the binoculars. His heart was not pounding. His hands were steady. He looked out at the tableau of violence he had created, the aftermath of his perfect, brutal symphony. He felt no surge of triumph, no wave of revulsion.
There was only the quiet, cold satisfaction of a problem solved. The operation was a success.