The scrap of paper in Jake's hand felt heavier than any crate of dynamite. The words struck him like a blow: The Nightingale has flown the cage.
All the slow-burning dread he'd been carrying in the sewer — the exhaustion, the moral fatigue, the cold calculus of command — evaporated. A single, sharp purpose took its place.
Kato was alive. She was out. She was in danger.
The Orlov job stopped being a political test or a way out. Those letters were no longer blackmail; they were bargaining chips for her life. Every quiet calculation he'd made up to that moment rearranged itself around one thing: bring her back.
The change in him filled the foul air. The planner who measured risk and probability was gone. In his place was someone with a hard, simple hunger. He turned to Pavel and Kamo. His voice was low and steady.
"This mission is non-negotiable," he said. "It's not for the Party now. It's for family. We won't fail."
The gangsters straightened. They knew protecting your own. It was a code they understood better than ideology. For the first time since Dmitri's death, something like resolve returned to their faces.
Jake unrolled the apartment floor plan on a slimy stone and pointed. "Listen. We get one shot."
He laid out the burglary like a mechanic describing a machine: bypass the locks, move on soft feet, avoid the watchman, open the German safe. No theatrics. No bravado.
They stared. Viktor spat on the floor. "Sneak? We're wolves, not cats."
"Wolves get shot," Jake said. "Cats live to hunt another day. Learn to be cats."
For two days the sewer became a training ground. Jake taught walking on the balls of the feet. He forced them to practice the break-in with chalk marks on the bricks. He made them memorize the watchman's rounds until they could say the times in their sleep. It looked ridiculous: a history teacher drilling criminals in silence and timing. But the practice stuck.
A bigger problem remained. His face was on every street corner. He could not be the man at the window. A general cannot lead a fight from another country — but he had to.
So he made a different plan. If he couldn't be their eyes, he would be their mind.
He pulled Misha, the wiry runner, close and drew in the dirt. "Misha, you'll watch a service alley a block from the apartment. Viktor's team will signal with a small, shielded candle. One flicker: inside. Two: safe found. Three: prize secured. Steady: trouble."
He traced the runner chain. "Igor sits between you and the sewer. You relay to him, he relays to me. Messages travel in under a minute. It's our field telephone."
His thoughts were precise and cold. I can't be there. So I'll make them simple. They won't think. They'll follow steps. Walk to the door. Wait. Insert the tool. Turn left. Obey.
When he finished, Kamo was silent. Arms crossed. Stone face.
"I won't do this," Kamo said. His voice was low. "Sneaking into a man's home to steal letters. Blackmail. It's not revolutionary. It's gutter work."
Jake had expected it. Kamo's honor was raw. But he also knew Kamo's loyalty ran deeper than politics. He reframed the task.
"I'm not asking you to be a thief," Jake said. "I'm asking you to be a guardian. If I'm captured, everyone's lost. Your job is to protect this junction. Hold off a patrol long enough for me to give the final order. You're protecting the commander, not the crime."
Kamo wrestled with it. Finally he nodded. He would stand watch.
The night came. The sewer held its breath. Pavel and his entry team, dressed like gas workers, crawled toward the manhole. Jake's last instruction was simple: "Follow the plan. Wait for the signals. Don't think. Act."
They surfaced into Nevsky Prospekt. Gaslights, carriages, clean pavements. They were out of place — rough faces among the well-dressed. Their movements drew glances. They moved like men who had to pretend to belong.
Back underground, Jake sat over the map by a single foul lantern. Kamo lurked in the shadow like a statue. The runner — a boy barely sixteen — waited to carry the first message.
Jake gave a tight nod. The boy sprinted. Footsteps slashed through the muck and then were gone.
The operation had begun. Jake, a world away from its execution, felt every second like a wire under tension. His future — and Kato's — depended on timing, discipline, and a chain of people who might never need to think for themselves again.