The seconds stretched into eternity, each one a drop of poison in the silence.
Jake and his men stood frozen, listening to the scene unfolding above—the creak of floorboards, the muffled voices, the life-or-death play being performed on the tavern stage above their heads. They were blind, helpless, and every heartbeat carried the weight of execution.
The bolt slid back. Ivan's voice followed—too loud, too bright, stretched thin over panic.
"Gentlemen! Apologies for the delay, had to move a barrel. Now, what's all this?"
A pause. The low murmur of a policeman. The clear, eager voice of a child:
"But Papa, I saw him! The man from the paper!"
Then came the sound that would haunt Jake forever. Ivan's laugh.
It was brittle, cracked, almost deranged—a man trying to sound jovial while standing on the edge of the gallows.
"Oh, Mitya, Mitya," Ivan said loudly, almost cheerfully. "This boy and his imagination! Forgive him, officers. Ever since that picture came out, every man with a moustache and a limp is the famous revolutionary. Yesterday it was the baker. The day before, old man Semyon from the stables. He's been driving us all mad."
A rustle. A hand ruffling a child's hair. A forced chuckle.
"That's enough, Mitya. The officers are busy men. Go polish the glasses."
Jake could see it in his mind—the skeptical looks, the boy's confusion, Ivan's desperate, smiling mask.
Then the policeman laughed. Short. Dismissive.
"He's got spirit, that one. Sorry to bother you, Ivan."
"No bother!" Ivan's voice cracked with relief. "For your trouble, gentlemen—something to warm the bones. On the house."
A bottle clinked on the bar. Boots shifted. Doors opened. Closed. The bell over the tavern door jingled once.
Gone.
The men below exhaled as one. They'd lived. Barely.
That night, they ran.
No one waited for morning. Under the cover of darkness, they left the cellar one by one and slipped into the city's veins—the sewers. Pavel led them through the labyrinth of tunnels he'd known since boyhood, a reeking underworld of dripping brick and black water. Their last refuge was gone. They were rats now, hunted and nameless.
In a wide junction lit by a single, flickering lantern, Kamo finally spoke.
He approached Jake slowly, his face grave. This wasn't anger—it was mourning.
"That man, Ivan," Kamo said quietly. "He fed us. He risked everything for us. And his son… a child." He hesitated, as if the words burned his mouth. "You put a gun to his father's head. You used that boy's life as a weapon."
His eyes met Jake's. There was no hatred—only something worse. Disbelief. "The Okhrana do that, Soso. The Black Hundreds do that. The Tsar's dogs do that. We were supposed to be better."
Jake's reply came out hoarse. "Better? There's no 'better' down here. There's only survival. I saved your life. Pavel's. Mine. It was the only move left."
Kamo's jaw clenched. "There are moves that shouldn't be made. Victories not worth winning. You saved our lives, yes. But at what cost?" His voice softened into something almost sorrowful. "We're not revolutionaries anymore, Soso. We're just monsters fighting monsters."
The words hung in the sewer air, thick and foul.
Kamo didn't threaten him. He didn't need to. His silence afterward said everything.
"I'll still follow you," he said at last. "I'll still fight for you. But don't mistake loyalty for blindness. I see what you're becoming. And I won't let it consume me."
He turned away, sitting in the shadows at the far end of the tunnel. He wasn't a comrade anymore. He was a warden—watching over the monster he'd helped make.
Pavel came next, his expression grim. "The barman and the boy," he said quietly. "They saw your face. The reward's high. Fear fades, greed doesn't. They're a loose end."
The meaning was clear. Should we kill them?
Jake froze. The cold, pragmatic part of him—the part that sounded more and more like Stalin—knew Pavel was right. Loose ends had to be cut. But then he saw Mitya's face in his mind—the innocent voice, the pride in it—and the thought turned his stomach.
"No," he said, almost pleading. "They've paid enough. We're not butchers of children. Not yet."
He reached into their dwindling stash of money—the last rubles from the payroll job. He split it in half and pressed one bundle into Pavel's hand. "This is for Dmitri's family. Make sure they get it."
The second half. "This goes to Ivan. Find someone who can deliver it. Tell him to take his son, get on the first train out, and never come back."
It hurt. The money could have bought them safety, food, weapons. But mercy was all he had left to prove he wasn't entirely lost.
Hours later, just as exhaustion had started to settle, one of Pavel's runners appeared at the mouth of the tunnel—a boy, soaked to the knees, gasping for breath. He carried a folded scrap of paper.
"It came through the old channels," the boy said. "From the south."
Not Malinovsky. The Caucasus network.
Jake snatched it, his hands trembling as he unfolded it under the lantern light. The code was simple, personal.
The Nightingale has flown the cage.
She is wounded but alive.
Headed for Kutaisi, seeking passage north.
Extremely vulnerable.
Your package is waiting.
Jake read it twice. The words blurred. The Nightingale.
It was the name he and Kato had once used for her in coded messages, stolen from an old Georgian poem. His throat tightened. She was alive.
Alive—but hurt, alone, and walking straight into the lion's den.
A surge of joy crashed into fear so strong it left him dizzy. All his schemes, his rivalries, his war with Stolypin and Malinovsky—all of it evaporated in an instant.
It wasn't about the revolution anymore. It wasn't about power or survival.
It was about her.
His wife was alive. And the only thing standing between him and the chance to save her was the impossible heist Malinovsky had ordered.
The mission wasn't a test anymore. It was his only way out.
His only way back to her.