The spoils of victory were a seat at a table in a smoke-filled room.
The first official meeting of the Council of People's Commissars—the new Soviet government—was underway. The air in the Smolny Institute's grandest meeting room was thick with chaos, argument, and the raw, intoxicating energy of creation.
Lenin sat at the head of the long table, a master conductor orchestrating a symphony of shouting men. They were carving up the corpse of the Russian Empire, creating new ministries, assigning vast territories, and distributing power with the stroke of a pen.
He looked down the table, his sharp, intelligent eyes landing directly on Jake.
"We need a People's Commissar for Nationalities," Lenin announced, his voice cutting through the din. "Someone to manage the dozens of ethnic groups, the Tartars, the Bashkirs, the Ukrainians, all the peoples now under our revolutionary protection."
He allowed himself a thin, strategic smile. "A Georgian, a man from the Caucasus himself, would be perfect for the post. Comrade Koba, the position is yours."
A wave of murmurs went through the room. Trotsky, sitting at Lenin's right hand, allowed a small, smug smirk to touch his lips.
Jake knew exactly what this was. It sounded like an honor, a position of great trust. In reality, it was a poisoned chalice. A bureaucratic dead-end. A political graveyard designed to take the popular, charismatic war hero—the Golden Demon of Kronstadt—and bury him under a mountain of paperwork in a ministry no one cared about. It was Lenin's way of putting his most dangerous attack dog on a very short, very secure leash.
They expected him to fight it. To demand a military position. To argue for a role with real, tangible power.
Jake shocked them all.
"I would be honored," he said, his voice calm and clear, "to serve the people and the revolution in this role, Comrade Lenin."
He accepted. Instantly. Without a hint of protest.
Lenin and Trotsky exchanged a confused, suspicious look. This wasn't part of their script. They had expected a confrontation, a battle of wills. Jake's easy acceptance was more unnerving than any angry outburst.
They didn't understand. They couldn't. They saw a desk job. A political cage.
Jake saw the perfect cover.
The People's Commissar of Nationalities would have legitimate, official authority over the exact regions of the former empire—like the distant Ural Mountains—where political prisoners, deposed aristocrats, and ethnic minorities were held.
Lenin, in his clever attempt to sideline him, had just handed him the keys to the Romanovs' prison.
Jake's first act as Commissar, just hours later, was to fire a cannonball directly into the side of the new state's most feared institution.
He stood before the council again and formally demanded a full and complete census of all "high-value political prisoners" currently being held in the minority regions. His official reasoning was flawless. "We must know who is being held where," he argued, his voice ringing with bureaucratic logic, "to prevent ethnic strife and ensure the local populations do not see us as the same kind of jailers as the Tsar."
His demand put him on a direct collision course with a man who was quickly becoming the most feared figure in Russia: Felix Dzerzhinsky.
"Iron Felix," the ascetic, fanatical leader of the newly formed Cheka, entered the room. His presence was like a block of ice, sucking all the warmth and air from the space. His eyes, burning with a cold, righteous fire, fixed on Jake.
"The prisoners of the Cheka are a matter of state security," Dzerzhinsky said, his voice a soft, chilling whisper that was more frightening than any shout. "They are not, and never will be, the concern of the Commissariat of Nationalities."
The two men locked horns in the center of the room, a silent, deadly battle of wills. The other commissars watched, holding their breath. It was the first power struggle of the new government. Dzerzhinsky had the authority of the secret police. He had the guns.
But Jake had the blackmail.
"Is it a matter of state security, Comrade Dzerzhinsky," Jake asked, his voice dangerously soft, "or is it a matter of German security?"
He let the implication hang in the air for a single, pregnant second. A subtle, unspoken reference to the German spies, the secret deals, the collaborators whose names he had uncovered at the Admiralty. A secret he had shared only with Lenin.
Dzerzhinsky's cold eyes flickered. He understood the threat instantly.
Lenin, seeing his new government about to tear itself apart before it was even a day old, intervened. "A compromise," he declared. "Comrade Koba's Commissariat will have 'oversight' of prisoners in the minority regions. The Cheka will retain 'operational control.'"
It was a meaningless, bureaucratic solution that satisfied no one. But it prevented an open war.
Jake had won the first round. He had his foot in the Cheka's door.
That night, he met the Finn again. The smuggler materialized from the fog on the same deserted pier, a ghost in the Petrograd night.
"Commissar Yakovlev," Jake said, getting straight to the point. He had the name of the Romanovs' jailer. "I need a way to get to him. To get inside his head."
The Finn nodded slowly, taking a drag from a hand-rolled cigarette. "His daughter," he said, the smoke curling from his lips. "She gets sicker by the day. He's desperate. Ready to trade his soul to the devil for a cure."
The Finn looked at Jake, his eyes shrewd. "But the devil isn't the problem. The problem is the Saint. Sister Anna. She's the only one with the medicine he wants. And she is protected. Always guarded by a silent giant, a Finn they say is mute. Getting to her is impossible. She sees no one without an appointment."
Jake understood. He couldn't go through the nurse. The risk of exposure was too high.
He had to make the nurse come to him.
The next day, in his new official capacity, Commissar Koba made a public visit to a makeshift hospital overflowing with wounded Red Guards. He walked the rows of cots, his face a mask of solemn compassion.
He found what he was looking for. A young Georgian soldier, a boy from his own hometown of Gori, his leg shattered and dying of gangrene.
Jake pulled up a stool. He sat with the boy. And in front of a dozen orderlies and nurses, he spoke to him softly in their native Georgian tongue, a language of home, a language of brothers. He held the boy's hand as the doctor told him his leg would have to be amputated. He made sure everyone saw him do it.
The story spread through the city like wildfire. Koba, the great war hero, the Demon of Kronstadt, was not a demon at all. He was a man of the people, a compassionate leader who had not forgotten his own. It was a perfect piece of propaganda.
That evening, a message arrived at his new, sparsely furnished office at the Smolny. It was a single, folded note on crisp, expensive German-made paper. The handwriting was neat, elegant, and feminine.
"Comrade Commissar," it read.
"I was moved to hear of your great compassion for the sick and wounded. I believe my special medicines, brought from my homeland, may be of some small help to your young countryman from Georgia."
"I would be honored to offer my assistance. Sister Anna."
Jake stared at the note. The fish had taken the bait. The board was set. And the game between the Commissar and the Saint was about to begin.