The gentle smile of Sister Anna died the moment the hospital door clicked shut behind her.
Kato Svanidze walked through the chaotic streets of Petrograd, a small, gray ghost moving through a world on fire. Soldiers and armed workers still roamed in jubilant gangs, their faces flushed with victory. The city was a sea of red flags and revolutionary fervor.
She saw none of it. Her mind was a cold engine of analysis, processing the data from her encounter with the Commissar.
He was strong, cunning, and he wore his power like a well-tailored coat. But she had seen the flicker of shock in his eyes when she'd neutralized his leverage. And she had felt something else, too. A strange, unsettling resonance. The man who called himself Koba felt like a half-remembered song, a phantom from a life she had burned to the ground.
She arrived at a drab, anonymous apartment building in a working-class district, a different safe house far from the prying eyes of Bogdan. Pavel was waiting inside, a silent statue of violence by the door. In the center of the room, her two captured German agents, Klaus and Erich, stood stiffly, their faces pale with anxiety. They were physicists, not spies, and they were terrified of her.
"Report," Kato said, her voice devoid of the warmth of Sister Anna. It was flat and sharp, the sound of chipping ice.
Klaus, the senior of the two, swallowed hard. "We searched the Commissar's office at the Smolny, as you ordered. It was… disappointing."
"We found very little," Erich added quickly, eager to manage her expectations. "No secret battle plans. No lists of German contacts. Mostly bureaucratic papers. Requisitions for grain, territorial disputes, requests from local councils."
Kato's expression did not change. She waited.
"But we found this," Klaus said, his hand trembling slightly as he held out a photograph. "It was tucked inside a thick book on agricultural yields of the Caucasus region. A strange diagram in a notebook."
Kato took the photograph.
It showed a page of handwritten notes. The script was messy, hurried. But in the center of the page was a clean, precise drawing. It depicted two long strands, twisting around each other like vines, connected by a series of horizontal rungs like a ladder. A perfect, intricate helix.
Below the strange symbol, a single phrase was written in English.
The code of life itself.
Kato stared at the image. Klaus and Erich saw a meaningless doodle. She saw a profound anomaly. A piece of a puzzle from another world.
This wasn't a military cipher. It wasn't a political symbol. It felt… alien. What kind of Bolshevik warlord, what kind of Georgian bank robber, filled his private notebooks with theoretical biology and English philosophy?
The mystery of the man known as Koba had just deepened immensely. This wasn't just a hunt for secrets anymore. It was an intellectual obsession. She had to solve the riddle of who he truly was.
Pavel stepped forward. He held out a copy of that day's Pravda, the official party newspaper. His thick finger pointed to a small, dense block of text on the front page.
Kato took the paper. She read the new decree, her mind moving with cold, rapid clarity.
The Council of People's Commissars, under the joint proposal of Comrades Lenin and Trotsky, had established a new body: The Supreme Revolutionary Military Committee.
Its stated purpose was to centralize command of all military and paramilitary units in Petrograd.
The head of the committee: Leon Trotsky.
Kato felt a surge of understanding so sharp it was almost painful. This wasn't bureaucracy. This was a declaration of war. A perfectly executed political assassination.
They were legally stripping Koba of his power base. The Kronstadt sailors, the Red Guards who worshipped the "Golden Demon"—all of them would now answer to Trotsky, not to him. In one elegant move, Lenin and Trotsky were trying to turn their most dangerous attack dog into a toothless pet, a Commissar of a useless ministry with no soldiers to command.
He was in far more danger than she had realized.
Kato began to pace the small room, the photograph in one hand, the newspaper in the other. Her agents watched her, silent and terrified of her coiled intensity.
The pieces were clicking into place on a chessboard far grander than she had initially perceived.
Koba was a man hiding an impossible secret, symbolized by a drawing she couldn't comprehend. Koba was a cornered political animal, about to be devoured by his own masters.
Her entire strategy shifted in that moment. Her perception of him changed. He was no longer just a target to be manipulated for her own survival. He was now a volatile, cornered king—the only piece on the board powerful enough to act as a shield against Lenin, Trotsky, and the Cheka.
A dead or powerless Koba was useless to her.
A desperate Koba, however… a desperate Koba was an asset of unparalleled value.
"They think he is a dog they can put on a leash," she murmured to herself, her voice a low whisper. "They don't know he's a wolf. And a wolf is only dangerous when it has nothing left to lose."
She stopped pacing. Her decision was made. Her path was clear.
She turned to Pavel. Her voice was the sound of pure command, devoid of all emotion. "Arrange the meeting for the Commissar with Yakovlev. He will get what he paid for."
She paused, her gray eyes glinting in the dim light. "Then, get a message to the Finn. I want him to open a second line of communication. A private one. Directly to me."
Kato looked down at the newspaper, at Trotsky's name printed in bold ink, then back at Pavel. Her final order hung in the air, a declaration of her entry into the great game.
"Tell him we have a new potential client. Someone who might need his unique smuggling services very soon."
Pavel tilted his head, a silent question in his eyes.
Kato's voice was a blade of ice.
"Tell him the client is the Tsar's family."