The cellar was quiet. The manic, drunken energy of the previous night had evaporated, leaving behind a sour fug. The air hung thick with the ghosts of cheap tobacco and stale vodka, a testament to a victory already fading into the past. The money, their glorious prize, now sat in neat, sober stacks on the central barrel, counted and divided. It looked smaller in the daylight, somehow less magical. It was just paper.
Pavel's men were scattered around the room, nursing their hangovers with grim stoicism. The boisterous camaraderie was gone, replaced by a tense, uncertain silence. They were thieves, not financiers. They knew how to take, but not how to hold. This pile of rubles was a feast, but a feast that would end, and then the familiar hunger would return. They kept glancing at Jake, their expressions a potent cocktail of fear and greedy, dependent awe. He was the planner, the alchemist who had turned their crude violence into gold. They were waiting for his next trick.
Pavel, his one good eye clear and serious, detached himself from the wall and approached Jake. He moved with a new deference, the swagger of the gang leader replaced by the caution of a man addressing a higher power.
"That was good work, planner," he said, his voice a low rumble. He gestured at the stacks of money. "Better than we could have ever done. But this… this will run out. And the gendarmes will be turning this district inside out looking for payroll robbers for weeks. The heat is on us now." He paused, his gaze intense. "What's next?"
It was the inevitable question. The one Jake had been turning over and over in his own mind. He looked down at his share of the money, a small, heavy sack resting by his feet. The ghost of Jake Vance screamed at him. Take it. Take it and run. Disappear. Find Kamo, find a way to get a message to Kato, and vanish into the heart of Russia. Live. Just live. It was the voice of survival, the voice of love.
But another voice, colder and more ambitious, spoke over it. The voice of Stalin. It didn't see a bag of money. It saw seed capital. It didn't see Pavel's thugs as a temporary liability. It saw a permanent asset. It didn't see an escape route. It saw an opportunity.
He looked up at Pavel, and the decision had been made. He was not going to run. He was going to build.
"Another robbery is stupid," Jake stated flatly. His tone was dismissive, as if scolding a child for a simple-minded idea. "It's inefficient. You risk your lives, you bring down the heat of the entire city, all for a single score. You are thinking like pickpockets."
Pavel and his men exchanged confused glances. Pavel himself bristled, a flash of his old pride returning. "We're not pickpockets. We're thieves."
"Exactly," Jake said, a faint, humorless smile touching his lips. He leaned forward, his eyes alight with a strange, intense fire. "So let's stop being common thieves and start the most profitable thievery of all."
He took a slow, deliberate sip of the lukewarm water from his tin cup. He was a teacher again, a professor before a captivated, if brutish, class.
"Power isn't in what you can take in a day," he began, his voice low and magnetic. "It's in what you can control every day. Tell me, Pavel, what does the owner of the Putilov factory fear more than anything?"
"Us?" Pavel ventured, uncertainly.
"No," Jake corrected him. "He fears his workers. He fears strikes. He fears sabotage. He fears the thousand little ways they can bleed him dry." He paused, letting the idea sink in. "And every shopkeeper in this district, what does he fear?"
"Thieves like us," Viktor grunted from the corner.
"Precisely," Jake affirmed. "They all live in fear. Fear is a resource, more valuable than gold. And we are going to mine it."
He stood up and began to pace the small, confined space, his words painting a picture his audience had never dared to imagine.
"We are not going to rob the shopkeepers anymore. We are going to protect them. From people like us. For a small fee, a modest weekly tax, we will guarantee that their windows don't get broken. We will guarantee that their deliveries arrive safely. We will sell them peace of mind."
"Protection?" Pavel scoffed. "That's police work."
"The police protect the rich men on the grand avenues," Jake countered smoothly. "Who protects the little man down here in the gutter? We will. We will be their police. And their tax collectors."
He turned, his vision expanding. "The black market. Every factory in this district bleeds. Workers steal tools, scrap metal, bolts of fabric, raw materials. They sell it to pawn brokers for pennies on the ruble. It's disorganized. Chaotic. We will organize it. We will create a network. We will set the prices. We will be the only buyers, and the only sellers. We will take a percentage of every single transaction, from the smallest bolt to the largest coil of copper wire. We won't just be thieves; we will become the bank for thieves."
As he spoke, he could feel it—the familiar, intoxicating thrill of creation. This wasn't just a plan for a robbery. This was a blueprint for a system. A living, breathing machine of power and control. The guilt, the constant, grinding ache for Kato, the fear of Stolypin—it all faded into the background, replaced by the pure, exhilarating joy of intellectual construction.
My God, it's so simple, he thought, a dizzying sense of clarity washing over him. They have the muscle, the raw force, but no structure. No vision. They live from crisis to crisis. I can give them a system. An organization. I can build a kingdom of ash and iron in the cracks of this rotting empire. This is more than survival. This is… construction. I'm not just a piece on the board anymore. I am building my own.
It was a monstrous vision, a syndicate built on fear and extortion. And a part of him, a part he no longer recognized, was falling deeply in love with his creation.
His final point was the master stroke. "And what is the most valuable commodity of all? Information. We will have eyes and ears in every factory, every tenement, every tavern. We will have the dock workers, the teamsters, the factory floor sweepers. They will tell us everything. We will know when police patrols are scheduled. We will know which officials are in debt, which ones can be bought. We will know which factory is getting a big shipment, which merchant is cheating his partners. Information is a weapon, and we will have an arsenal."
He stopped pacing and stood before them, his quiet, wounded frame seeming to radiate an immense and terrible power. He had laid out a vision not of a single score, but of a permanent, stable, and ever-growing enterprise.
Pavel and his men were mesmerized. Their faces, hardened by a lifetime of brutal, short-sighted violence, were slack with a kind of childlike wonder. They had only ever seen the next wall to climb, the next purse to snatch. This quiet, educated man had shown them the entire city, laid out like a map, ready to be conquered and farmed. He was not a planner. He was a prophet.
Pavel looked at Jake, at the burning intelligence in his eyes, at the unshakeable confidence in his voice, and he saw a king. He saw the future. He made a decision that would change the entire criminal underworld of the Vyborg district.
Slowly, deliberately, Pavel stepped forward. He held out his large, calloused hand. It was not the gesture of an equal striking a bargain. It was the gesture of a subordinate, a soldier, pledging fealty to his general.
"Show us how, planner," Pavel said, his voice thick with a new, raw reverence. "Show us how to build this… kingdom of yours. We will follow you."
The other men murmured their assent, their eyes fixed on Jake.
Jake looked at the offered hand, a hand stained with dirt and probably blood. It was the key to his new kingdom. A grimy, violent, sordid kingdom, but a kingdom nonetheless. It was a throne of skulls, but it was a throne.
The revolutionary was dead. The mob boss was about to be born.