The world snapped into a crystalline, horrifying focus. The low hum of the teahouse—the clink of porcelain, the murmur of polite conversation, the scrape of a chair—continued on, an oblivious symphony playing in a world that had, for Kato, just ended. Her reality had collapsed to three points of a terrifying triangle: her own frozen form, the ashen, trembling face of the teacher David Zaguri, and the two impassive men by the door, whose cold, professional stares were pins holding her to this moment.
Fear, pure and paralyzing, was a wave of ice water in her veins. This was it. The end of the waiting. The end of the hope. They had found her. They would take her, spirit her away to some damp, nameless cell. And Soso… what would he do?
Her mind, sharpened by weeks of anxiety, raced past the fear. A flash of memory: Soso, in their Tbilisi apartment, pacing like a caged wolf after a failed action. "Leverage, Kato," he had muttered, his voice a low, intense growl. "They will never fight me directly if they think they have a chain around my neck. And you, my love… you are the strongest chain they could ever forge."
The memory was a lightning strike, burning away the fog of panic. She was not just a target; she was leverage. A weapon to be used against her husband. If they took her, Soso would not be rational. He would do something reckless, something suicidal to get her back. Her capture wouldn't just be her doom; it would be his.
She had to act. She could not be a passive pawn, a captured queen waiting to be used in the enemy's checkmate.
She looked at the pathetic creature across from her. David Zaguri was a broken man, his eyes wide with the terror of a rabbit in a snare. He was no ally. He could not help her. But he could be used. He could be a prop.
A desperate, insane, and brilliant idea bloomed in the ruins of her fear. The two agents by the door expected a quiet arrest. They expected a frightened woman to be led away with minimal fuss. They were professionals, trained to control a situation through quiet intimidation. She would not give them a situation they could control. She would give them chaos. She would give them a spectacle. She would weaponize the one thing they could not anticipate: the social decorum of a respectable public establishment.
She took a single, deep, shuddering breath. In that breath, she ceased to be Ekaterina Svanidze, the revolutionary's wife. She became a character in a play of her own sudden devising: the hysterical, scorned woman.
Her face, a moment before a mask of controlled fear, contorted into a mask of pure, theatrical rage. Her eyes blazed. She shot to her feet, shoving her chair back with such force that it scraped loudly across the wooden floor and nearly toppled over. The sound was a gunshot in the quiet room. Every head in the teahouse turned towards their table.
She pointed a trembling, accusing finger at the bewildered Zaguri.
"You!" she shrieked, her voice rising in a pitch-perfect imitation of wounded, feminine anguish. It was a sound that demanded attention, a sound that sliced through the polite hum of the room. "You monster! After everything? After all your promises to my husband? He trusted you! He told me you would watch over me, that you were a decent man! And you try this?"
Zaguri stared at her, his mouth agape, his terror momentarily eclipsed by sheer, uncomprehending shock. The two Okhrana agents, who had begun to rise from their seats, froze mid-motion. This was not in their manuals. This was not the quiet extraction they had planned. This was a public scene.
Kato knew she had their attention. She escalated, turning her performance to the wider audience, to the now-gaping patrons of the teahouse. Her eyes filled with well-timed tears, her voice breaking with fabricated sobs.
"This man!" she cried, her voice carrying to every corner of the room. "He tried to… to put his hands on me! He thought because my husband is away, because I am alone… he thought he could take advantage! A scoundrel! A lecher preying on a lonely wife!" She took a step forward, her body trembling with righteous fury. "Is there no decency left in this world? No honor?"
To punctuate her performance, to make the accusation brutally, physically real, she drew back her hand and slapped David Zaguri hard across the face.
The sound of the slap cracked through the room like a whip. It was the point of no return.
The teahouse erupted.
The owner, a portly man with a magnificent moustache, came rushing over, his face a mask of horrified concern. "Madam! Madam, what is the meaning of this?"
Patrons were on their feet. A woman in a feathered hat gasped in horror. Two burly men, merchants by their dress, began to advance on Zaguri's table, their faces dark with outrage. "Is this true?" one of them growled at the stunned teacher. "Did you accost this lady?"
The two Okhrana agents were trapped in a social nightmare. Their targets were now the center of a burgeoning public scandal. Their cover as anonymous patrons was shattered. To try and arrest them both now would be impossible. It would look like they were abducting a molester and his victim. They could not use force without revealing themselves, and to reveal themselves would be a catastrophic professional failure. Their quiet, surgical operation had devolved into a farce.
One agent made a move toward Zaguri, his hand reaching for the man's arm. "Sir, perhaps you should come with us—"
"Stay away from him!" the merchant roared, stepping between the agent and Zaguri. "He's not going anywhere until we get to the bottom of this!"
This was her chance. The chaos was her ladder.
While all eyes were on the confrontation unfolding around the hapless Zaguri, Kato gave a final, heart-wrenching sob. She clutched her face as if overcome with shame and grief and stumbled away from the table, toward the back of the teahouse.
"I… I must compose myself," she stammered to the owner, who patted her arm with flustered sympathy. "The ladies' retiring room…"
The agents, their attention divided, their mission in shambles, let her go. It was a fatal, split-second miscalculation. They were focused on securing their primary target, the known subversive, Zaguri. The wife was secondary.
Kato did not go to the retiring room.
She walked, then stumbled, then ran. She pushed through the swinging doors of the kitchen, ignoring the shocked shouts of the cook and a dishwasher. The air was suddenly thick with the smell of steam and boiled cabbage. She fumbled with the bolt on the heavy back door, her fingers slick with sweat. It gave way with a groan.
She burst out into a narrow, filthy service alley. The cold air was a shock, smelling of refuse and damp stone. She didn't look back. She didn't hesitate. She ran, her sensible shoes slipping on the grimy cobblestones.
She rounded a corner, then another, plunging deeper into a labyrinth of backstreets she did not know. Her heart hammered against her ribs, a frantic drumbeat against the sudden, shocking silence. Her lungs burned. She had done it. Her insane gambit had worked.
She pressed herself into a dark, shadowed alcove between two buildings, fighting to control her ragged breaths. Peeking around the corner, she saw two uniformed city policemen, their whistles blowing shrilly, running towards the front of the teahouse, drawn by the public disturbance she had orchestrated.
She was free. She had escaped the trap.
But as the adrenaline began to fade, a new, colder fear took its place. She was alone in an unfamiliar town. The men hunting her now knew her face. Her only known contact was in their custody. She had no money, no allies, and no plan beyond the next breath. She had broken out of her gilded cage, only to find herself in a vast, open wilderness, with the hunters now searching for her in earnest. She was no longer a protected piece. She was a fugitive.