Night fell over St. Petersburg like a shroud, muffling the city's sounds and cloaking its sins. The Vyborg district became a maze of looming, lightless factories and dark, forbidding alleyways. It was a landscape Jake was coming to know intimately. He moved through it now not as a fugitive, but as a predator, with Kamo a silent, hulking shadow at his side.
He had accepted Pavel's fealty. The pact was sealed. The first, tentative steps of building his new, grimy kingdom were already being taken. But as he gave orders, delegating tasks to his new lieutenants, a part of his mind remained cold and detached, focused on a single, desperate objective. Pavel's gang was a tool for survival. The Party was the only path to victory. He had to re-establish contact.
The mission was a dire risk. Every instinct screamed that the dead drop, the loose brick behind the Smolny Monastery, was the most obvious trap in the world. Stolypin was not a fool. He would have anticipated that a cut-off operative would try to find his handlers. The entire area could be crawling with Okhrana agents, a net waiting to be pulled tight. But it was the only chance he had.
As they walked, the silence between Jake and Kamo was heavy, freighted with unspoken words. Kamo had watched the proceedings in the cellar with a stoic, unreadable expression. He had seen his leader, the man he followed as an instrument of revolution, effortlessly assume the mantle of a crime lord.
"You are comfortable with them," Kamo finally said, his voice a low rumble that was not quite an accusation. It was a statement of fact, a dispassionate observation that carried more weight than any shouted argument.
"They are a tool, Kamo," Jake replied, his voice clipped, his gaze fixed on the path ahead. "A means to an end. Nothing more." He was trying to convince himself as much as Kamo.
"What end, Soso?" Kamo asked, his voice quiet, almost sorrowful. "Before, there was the Party. The Congress. The revolution. Now… there is this. A kingdom of thieves. It is getting harder to see the end of the road."
The words struck Jake with the force of a physical blow. Kamo's loyalty had always been a given, a fundamental law of his new universe. To hear it questioned, to hear the first, faint cracks of doubt in that foundation, was terrifying. It was a reminder of how far he had drifted from his own moral shores. He had no answer for his friend. Or rather, he had an answer, but he was afraid to speak it aloud: The end is survival. My survival. At any cost.
They reached the high stone wall that enclosed the monastery gardens. The street was deserted, the only light a distant, flickering gas lamp that cast long, dancing shadows. The place felt haunted, watched.
"Stay here," Jake whispered. "If I am not back in five minutes, or if you hear anything, run. Do not try to be a hero. Just run. Get the money and disappear."
Kamo gave a short, sharp nod, his hand already resting on the heavy Nagant revolver tucked into his belt. He melted back into the deeper darkness of an alcove, becoming one with the shadows.
Jake's heart, which had been a cold, steady machine all day, began to pound in his chest. This was not a calculated risk. This was not a chess move. This was a desperate prayer, a blind reach into the darkness. He walked along the wall, his fingers trailing over the cold, rough-hewn stone, searching.
He found it. A single brick, a shade darker than the others, loose in its mortar.
He glanced back. The street was still empty. With trembling fingers, he worked the brick free. It came away with a soft scraping sound that seemed deafeningly loud in the silence. A cold, dark cavity was revealed. He hesitated for a fraction of a second, his mind screaming TRAP, then plunged his hand inside.
His fingers, numb with cold and tension, brushed against something. Paper.
A wave of relief so powerful it made his knees weak washed over him. It was real. Misha had succeeded. Someone had gotten the message. Someone had replied. They were not alone.
He pulled the small, tightly folded note from the hole, quickly replacing the brick. He didn't dare read it here. He gave a low whistle, a pre-arranged signal, and Kamo emerged from the shadows. They retreated, moving swiftly and silently, deeper into the warren of back alleys, until they found a secluded, stinking space behind a collapsed cooperage.
Shielded from the street, Kamo struck a match. The sudden, tiny flame illuminated their faces, casting them in stark, flickering relief. Jake's hands shook as he carefully unfolded the note.
The message was written in a simple substitution cipher, one he recognized from his time in Tbilisi. His mind, honed by years of academic discipline and months of clandestine warfare, worked quickly. The letters unscrambled themselves, the words forming into sentences of pure, unadulterated salvation.
Koba, it began, using his most secret party moniker. Message received. Catastrophe in the capital confirmed. Your survival is a testament to your resourcefulness. The Center is impressed. Do not despair. We have not abandoned you.
Jake's breath hitched. The Center. Lenin's inner circle. They knew.
A route has been established, the message continued. Proceed to the Varshavsky Station in three days. Ask for a ticket to Gatchina. The ticket master is one of ours. He will provide further instructions. It will lead to a safe house in Finland. We will get you out. You are too valuable an asset to lose.
It was everything he had prayed for. An escape. A lifeline. A path back to the real fight. A way out of this grimy, dishonorable kingdom he had started to build. He felt a surge of joyous, overwhelming relief.
Then, his eyes fell to the bottom of the note. The signature.
It was a single name, written in a clear, confident hand.
Roman Malinovsky.
The name hit Jake like a physical blow, knocking the air from his lungs. The match in Kamo's hand flickered, the light dancing in Jake's wide, horrified eyes.
Malinovsky.
Roman Malinovsky. The name echoed in the halls of his 21st-century memory, a name synonymous with the ultimate betrayal. The Okhrana's greatest prize. A paid agent, a provocateur who would rise to the highest echelons of the Bolshevik party, becoming Lenin's trusted lieutenant, the leader of their faction in the State Duma, all while systematically feeding every secret, every name, every plan to Pyotr Stolypin's secret police. He was the ghost. He was the leak. He was the reason the Tbilisi network had been eviscerated. He was the architect of their current destruction.
The man offering him the key to his cage was the zookeeper.
The relief curdled into ice-cold dread. This wasn't a lifeline. It was a leash. Malinovsky wasn't saving him; he was recruiting him, testing him, pulling him into his own web of deceit.
His eyes scanned the note again, and he saw the final lines, the postscript he had missed in his initial elation.
Your resourcefulness is needed. Before we arrange your transport, your loyalty and utility to the Center must be demonstrated. The Mensheviks have established a new illegal print shop on Vasilievsky Island. It floods the factories with divisive lies, undermining our work. The location is enclosed. You will eliminate this problem. The press, the pamphlets, the printers. All of it. Consider it a test of your commitment.
The match burned down to Kamo's fingers, and he dropped it with a curse, plunging them back into darkness. But the words were seared into Jake's mind, glowing like embers.
It was a test. But not for the Party. It was a test for the Okhrana. Malinovsky, the agent provocateur, was ordering him to do the secret police's dirty work under the guise of a revolutionary mission—to crush a rival socialist faction.
He stood in the darkness, the small piece of paper clutched in his hand, feeling as if it were burning his skin. The choice was stark, brutal, and utterly impossible.
If he refused, if he simply disappeared into his new criminal enterprise, Malinovsky would report his insubordination. He would be branded a traitor or a coward. He would remain cut off from the Party forever, truly alone.
If he accepted, he would be knowingly walking into the web of the Party's greatest traitor. He would become a pawn of the Okhrana, forced to commit a monstrous act against fellow revolutionaries—men who, for all their ideological differences, were still fighting the same enemy.
The note in his hand was not a message of hope. It was a devil's bargain, and his soul was the price of admission.