The adrenaline from her escape had been a fire, burning hot and bright, consuming her fear and leaving a trail of pure, instinctual action. But fires die down, and all Kato was left with was the cold, grey ash of reality. She was a fugitive. The words, which had seemed so abstract, so theatrical before, were now a brutal, physical truth.
The first twenty-four hours were a lesson in misery. Cold was a constant companion, seeping through her respectable but wholly inadequate dress, chilling her to the bone as she huddled in the back of a derelict stable on the edge of town. Hunger was a gnawing, insistent ache in her belly, a reminder that her body was a machine that required fuel she did not have. Thirst left her mouth dry and cracked, forcing her to risk drinking from a horse trough, the water metallic and icy.
But the worst was the fear. It was a suffocating blanket. Every passerby was a potential threat, their casual glances feeling like the focused stare of an Okhrana agent. The distant, shrill blast of a city policeman's whistle sent her scrambling deeper into the shadows, her heart hammering against her ribs like a trapped bird. She saw the faces of the two men from the teahouse everywhere—in the face of a baker, a carriage driver, a child. The entire town felt like a prison yard, and she was the one inmate out of her cell.
On the second morning, hunger drove her to an act she would have once thought impossible. She watched a baker's stall, her eyes locked on a tray of fresh, warm bread left unattended for a moment. Her body moved before her mind could protest. A swift, desperate lunge, the warm loaf clutched in her hand, and then she was running, her face burning with a shame so profound it was almost a physical pain. She devoured the bread in a filthy alleyway, the taste of her crime mingling with the dough. This was not survival. This was a slow, degrading slide into oblivion.
Huddled in a new hiding place, a collapsed and forgotten woodshed, she knew she could not go on like this. The Party was a dead end; Zaguri's terrified face was proof of that. Every official channel was compromised. She needed a different kind of help. She needed a way to navigate the cracks in the system, not the system itself.
She forced her mind back, away from the fear and the hunger, back through the years to quieter, happier times in Tbilisi. She sifted through scraps of conversation with Soso, back when he was more poet than general, when his darkness was a romantic shadow rather than a terrifying wall. He had spoken of his early days in the movement, before the grand congresses and ideological schisms. He spoke of the rougher side of the revolution, of the outlaws and gangsters, the Keto gangs, who were their reluctant, occasional allies. An underworld that ran parallel to their own.
And he had mentioned a name. She had to dig for it, brushing away layers of memory, but it was there. A man who was not a revolutionary, not an idealist, but a pure pragmatist. A man who could get anything—a person, a package, a weapon—across any border, for a price. A fixer, a smuggler. A man named Levan.
The memory was a flicker of light in the crushing darkness. It was a desperate, insane long shot. Levan might be dead, or in prison, or simply a figment of Soso's boastful storytelling. But he was the only chance she had.
She made a calculated decision. She reached up and unclasped the thin silver chain from around her neck. At the end of it was a small, simple locket, plain and unadorned. It had been a gift from Soso on their first wedding anniversary. It was her last tangible link to the man she had married, the last piece of the life that had been stolen from her. Her fingers trembled as she held it. Selling it felt like a betrayal, like cutting the final thread of her own history. But sentiment was a luxury a fugitive could not afford.
She found a dingy pawn shop and sold it for a handful of rubles. The pawnbroker's greedy eyes barely registered her existence. She was just another desperate woman selling her past for a few more days of a future.
She did not spend the money on food or a warm room. She used it to buy information.
That evening, she walked into the kind of tavern she would have crossed the street to avoid a week ago. The place was a pit, the air thick with the fumes of cheap alcohol, boiled cabbage, and unwashed bodies. It was filled with hard-looking men—dockworkers, teamsters, sailors—their faces grim, their eyes suspicious. Her entrance caused a brief ripple in the low, rumbling conversations. A respectable woman did not come to a place like this alone unless she was selling something.
She ignored the leering stares, her face a mask of manufactured desperation. She approached the barman, a hulking man with a scarred face. She put a few rubles on the stained wooden bar.
"I'm looking for my brother," she said, her voice trembling slightly, playing the part of the worried sister. "He's a fool, always getting into trouble. He mentioned a man who might be able to help him… a man named Levan."
The barman eyed the coins, then her face, his expression unreadable. He grunted, then nodded toward a dark, smoke-filled corner of the room. "Over there. But I'd leave your brother to his troubles if I were you."
She found him sitting alone, nursing a glass of dark liquid. He was not what she expected. He was not a brutish thug or a romantic outlaw. He was a wiry, middle-aged man, his face a roadmap of hard living, his eyes cynical and intelligent. Several of his front teeth were missing, giving his mouth a collapsed, knowing look. He was a survivor.
He watched her approach, his eyes missing nothing, taking in her good but worn dress, the fear she was trying to hide, the resolve that lay beneath it.
"Levan?" she asked, her voice quiet.
"Depends who's asking," he replied, not bothering to invite her to sit.
"My name is Ekaterina," she said, choosing not to use her surname. "I need to get out of Borjomi. I was told you are a man who can arrange such things."
He gave a short, ugly laugh. "I am. For a price. A price I doubt you can pay, lady." His eyes roamed over her, and he clearly saw a woman with nothing left to sell. He was about to dismiss her.
She had to play her only card. It was a card of pure bluff and terror.
"I am the wife of Iosif Dzhugashvili," she said, her voice low and steady.
Levan froze, his glass halfway to his lips. His cynical expression was replaced by one of genuine, wary shock. He stared at her, really looked at her now, as if trying to see the resemblance to a ghost.
"Koba's wife?" he finally whispered, the name a legend in the Georgian underworld. He looked her up and down again. "I heard Koba was dead. Or in a St. Petersburg prison." He leaned back, his eyes narrowing. "Why should I help you? The Okhrana would pay a king's ransom for you. I am a businessman, not a martyr."
Kato met his gaze without flinching. This was the moment. She could not appeal to his ideology or his compassion. She had to speak the only language he understood: self-interest, backed by the threat of violence.
"Because Iosif is not dead," she said, her voice as cold and hard as she could make it. "And he has a very, very long memory. And so does his closest friend. A man named Kamo."
At the name "Kamo," a visible change came over Levan. The professional cynicism in his eyes was replaced by a flicker of something else. A primal, cautious respect. The name of the legendary enforcer, the "Master of Expropriations," the butcher of the Tiflis bank job, was not just a name. It was a force of nature in the Caucasus. It was a name associated with both unbelievable wealth and unbelievable brutality.
Kato pressed her advantage, her voice a low, menacing promise. "Help me get out. Help me get to him. And I will see to it that you are rewarded beyond your imagination. Iosif does not forget his debts. But if you even think of selling me to the police… Kamo will find you. It doesn't matter where you run. It doesn't matter how long it takes. He will find you. And he will collect on that debt, too."
It was a complete and utter bluff. She had no idea where Soso or Kamo were. They could very well be dead. But she delivered the threat with the absolute, unwavering conviction of a queen speaking for her kingdom. She channeled the chilling certainty she had seen in her husband's eyes.
Levan was silent for a long, tense moment. He stared into her eyes, searching for any sign of weakness, any hint of a lie. He was weighing the immediate, certain reward from the Okhrana against the potential, catastrophic risk of Kamo's vengeance.
Finally, a slow, greasy, humorless grin spread across his face, revealing the dark gaps between his teeth.
"Alright, little revolutionary queen," he rasped, his tone a mixture of admiration and avarice. "You have nerve. I'll give you that. I'll get you out of Borjomi."
He leaned in, the stench of cheap wine on his breath. His voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper.
"But it won't be easy. Your husband and his friends made sure of that. The Okhrana has patrols on every main road. They're checking papers on every train, every carriage. They are strangling this town." He paused for effect. "The only way out now is the old way. The smugglers' route. Through the Borjomi Gorge, at night, on foot. But the gendarmes have been watching it like hawks. They put up new checkpoints, sent more patrols... ever since your husband made himself and his friends the richest men in the Caucasus."
He leaned back, his cynical grin returning. "Funny, isn't it? The very crime that made him a legend is the same reason you might end up in a shallow grave in that gorge. Poetic."