The official letter from Commissar Koba arrived sealed with the wax of the new Soviet state, but Kato knew it for what it was: a key, forged in desperation.
She held the document, the ink still smelling faintly of the Smolny Institute's cheap stationery. It was her shield, her passport, her weapon. With it, she could move through the city not as a conspirator, but as a celebrated ally of the revolution. She had won her price.
Now, it was time to collect on her other investments.
Fog rolled off the Neva river, thick and cold, shrouding the world in a silent, grey blanket. On a deserted shipping pier, a single point of light glowed in the oppressive gloom—the burning tip of the Finn's hand-rolled cigarette.
He materialized from the mist as she approached, a nervous energy radiating from his tense frame.
"Sister Anna," he began, his voice raspy. "Your message was… unusual."
Kato stopped a few feet from him. She let the silence stretch, the only sound the gentle lapping of the black water against the wooden pylons. When she spoke, the soft, compassionate voice of the nurse was gone. In its place was something cold and hard, a voice that matched the fog.
"Sister Anna is a role I play for the Bolsheviks," she said. "You will not use that name with me again."
The Finn flinched as if struck.
"You work for me now," she continued, her voice cutting through the damp air. "Not for a cause. Not for a client. For me. Do you understand the distinction?"
He was a freelancer, a man who survived by playing all sides, who valued his independence above all else. In her flat, emotionless tone, he heard the sound of a cage door slamming shut. He saw the abyss in her eyes and understood with perfect clarity that refusal was not an option.
He gave a short, jerky nod. "I understand."
"Good," Kato said. "You will use your network to get a message to Commissar Yakovlev in Tobolsk. A private one. Tell him there is a buyer for his 'cargo.' A very wealthy buyer, with powerful friends in Europe who wish to see it delivered safely."
The Finn's eyes widened. He understood the code instantly. He was no longer smuggling medicine. This was a different game entirely. A game of kings and empires.
"It will be done," he whispered. He was no longer her contractor. He was her servant.
The dacha outside Petrograd was a prison of comfort. Snow blanketed the pine trees surrounding the high stone wall, muffling all sound. It was a world of absolute silence.
Kato did not enter the main room. She stood in the shadows of the hallway, a silent observer watching a new world being born.
Through the open doorway, she could see Professor Ipatieff. He was a man possessed, his face illuminated by the warm glow of a single lamp. He stood before a massive blackboard, his hand a blur as it covered the dark slate with a cascade of white symbols and numbers. He was no longer a broken prisoner. He was a prophet, revealing a terrible new gospel.
Her two German physicists, Klaus and Erich, sat at a small table, watching him with a mixture of awe and terror. They were no longer his guards. They were his acolytes.
"No, no, you are thinking too small," Ipatieff said, his voice alive with a feverish, brilliant energy he hadn't possessed in years. He wasn't speaking to them, but to the universe. "A simple explosion is inefficient. A waste. The key is not detonation. The key is propagation."
He drew a series of circles on the board. "Imagine a bonfire. If you have one log, it smolders. Two, it burns. But if you stack enough logs, just so… the heat from one ignites the next, which ignites the next, and the next, faster than sight, faster than thought. It becomes a self-sustaining fire. A chain reaction."
He turned, his eyes blazing with a manic, almost divine light. "You must achieve critical mass. A density of fuel so great that a single stray neutron becomes the spark that burns the sky."
Kato didn't understand the physics. She didn't need to.
She understood the metaphor. She understood the obsessive, terrifying gleam in Ipatieff's eyes. This was not just a bigger bomb he was designing. He was giving her the recipe for a new kind of fire. A sun on Earth.
The power he was unlocking was absolute, and her resolve hardened into something unbreakable. She would control this weapon. She would be the only one with her hand on the trigger. No matter the cost.
Armed with Koba's letter, Kato walked through the halls of the Smolny Institute as Sister Anna. Red Guards nodded respectfully. Commissars, smelling of cheap tobacco and sleepless nights, stepped aside for the gentle German nurse. The document was more powerful than a gun.
She found Bogdan in his cramped office, buried under a literal mountain of paperwork. He looked exhausted, the skin under his eyes dark and bruised.
She played her part to perfection.
"Comrade Bogdan," she said, her voice full of soft concern. "You must take better care. The revolution needs your strength."
Bogdan looked up, his weary face breaking into a grateful smile. The presence of Sister Anna was like a cool cloth on a fevered brow. "Ah, Sister. If only I could. The work never ends."
"You all carry such heavy burdens," she said, placing a small tin of herbal tea on his desk. "Comrade Lenin, especially. I see him in the halls and I worry for his health. Such immense stress is not good for the soul."
Bogdan sighed, flattered by her concern and eager to unburden himself to a sympathetic ear. "He carries the weight of the world, Sister. You wouldn't believe the pressures. The Germans, especially." He let it slip, a moment of indiscretion, trusting the pious nurse completely. "They demand results for their… investment."
Kato's mind went perfectly still. She kept her expression soft, her eyes full of gentle pity. "It must be so difficult, managing such complex finances on top of everything else."
It was the opening he needed. Bogdan, desperate to impress her, to share the secret weight he carried, made a fatal mistake.
"Thank God we have Parvus," he said with a weary smile, lowering his voice conspiratorially. "He handles all of it. A true genius, that man. Without him managing the accounts in Stockholm and Berlin, the entire revolution would have collapsed months ago."
A name.
Parvus.
It landed in Kato's mind like a diamond. Not a rumor. Not a theory. A name, spoken by a high-ranking Bolshevik. The direct link to the German gold. The financial intermediary. The man who held the purse strings to Lenin's entire operation.
Kato offered a quiet prayer for Bogdan's health and strength, her face a perfect mask of saintly compassion.
She walked out of the Smolny, the letter from Koba tucked safely away. But as she stepped back into the cold, revolutionary air, she was no longer Sister Anna, the gentle nurse. She was a hunter who had just been given the name of her true prey.
Her next target was not in Petrograd. He was in Stockholm, in the heart of the kingdom she had once helped build. And she was coming to collect his secrets, or his head.