In a city of ghosts, the local Cheka commander was the cruelest specter of them all.
Jake descended into the freezing, damp cellar of the Tsaritsyn Cheka headquarters. The air was thick with the smell of fear, disinfectant, and the unslaked lime used to cover the evidence of hasty executions. This was the heart of the Red Terror on the Southern Front.
A man sat at a crude wooden table under the light of a single, bare bulb. He was cleaning a blood-stained Nagan revolver with a small, delicate brush, his movements precise and unsettlingly calm. This was Taranov, the man who held the power of life and death in this besieged city. His eyes, when he looked up, burned with the cold, righteous fire of a true fanatic.
Taranov did not rise. He simply watched Jake approach, his gaze assessing, hostile. He was a man who answered to Dzerzhinsky and to God, in that order. Everyone else was an obstacle.
"The great Commissar from Petrograd," Taranov said, his voice a low rasp. "Come to grace us with your presence while the revolution bleeds."
Jake ignored the insult. He pulled up a crate and sat opposite the Cheka commander. He knew from his files that Taranov despised the corrupt army command, a nest of Trotsky's political appointees who lived in luxury while their men died.
"The army officers here are rotten," Taranov continued, not waiting for a reply. He held his revolver up to the light, inspecting the barrel. "Trotsky's sycophants. They drink French wine and trade medical supplies on the black market. They are traitors to the revolution, and I lack the authority to shoot them all."
"I agree," Jake said. He reached into his greatcoat and pulled out the oilskin pouch Kato had given him. He placed it on the table between them. "And I have the proof."
Taranov's eyes flickered down to the pouch, a flicker of genuine interest in his cold gaze.
"But I have a problem," Jake continued. "I have the title of commander, but Trotsky's puppets in the military council refuse to recognize my authority. I cannot give a single order."
He pushed the file forward. "You, however, have the authority to investigate treason, regardless of rank. I am giving you a list of traitors, complete with evidence of their crimes."
Jake leaned forward, his voice dropping. "In return for this gift, your men will become my personal shock troops. For the duration of this crisis, the Tsaritsyn Cheka will answer to me, and to me alone."
It was a pact with the devil. A pure, transactional alliance of blood and power.
Taranov looked from the file to Jake's face. He saw a commander who was not afraid to get his hands dirty, a man who would finally unleash him. A slow, cruel smile spread across his lips. "It seems the revolution has finally sent me a man I can work with."
That night, the purge began.
Jake and Taranov worked from the cellar, which had been transformed into a grim command center. A list of names sat on the desk under the harsh light of the lantern. As reports came in from the city, Taranov would draw a thick, red line through a name, the motion as final as a guillotine's blade.
Teams of Chekists, guided by Jake's loyal Kronstadt sailors who knew which faces to look for, moved through the darkened city. They didn't make quiet, polite arrests. They kicked down the doors of opulent apartments and dragged their stunned, half-dressed targets out into the frozen streets.
They found Voroshilov, Trotsky's chief political commissar, in a requisitioned mansion that had been turned into a private brothel. He was with two women, drunk on a case of French champagne, while his men were literally starving to death in the trenches less than five miles away. The evidence of his corruption was so blatant, so absolute, it was almost a caricature.
An hour later, Jake confronted him in a cold, bare interrogation room.
Voroshilov's drunkenness had been replaced by a sputtering, arrogant fury. "Trotsky will hear of this!" he blustered, his face red with indignation. "This is an illegal arrest! You have no authority! You will be shot for this!"
Jake remained perfectly calm. He walked to the table and placed two photographs on it. The first was a picture he had taken himself that afternoon: the hollow-eyed boy soldier with his feet wrapped in newspaper. The second was a photo a Chekist had just taken of the feast laid out at Voroshilov's party—roast meats, fine cheeses, bottles of champagne.
"Trotsky is a thousand miles away, Commissar," Jake said, his voice dangerously soft. "I am right here. And so is Commander Taranov."
He gestured to the doorway. Taranov stood there, a silent, menacing specter, his newly cleaned revolver held loosely in his hand.
"This," Jake said, tapping the photo of the feast, "is your treason. Not against Trotsky. Not against me." He tapped the photo of the boy soldier. "Against them. Against the Revolution."
Voroshilov's arrogance finally cracked, shattered by the simple, brutal truth. He looked from the photos to Taranov's cold, pitiless eyes, and he understood that he had been completely outmaneuvered. His political patrons couldn't save him. He was going to die in this cellar.
He broke. "Wait," he pleaded, his voice now a desperate whine. "I can be useful. The others… I know who they are. The whole network. I can give you their names. All of them. In exchange for my life."
The next morning, the city of Tsaritsyn awoke to the sound of soldiers being marshaled.
Jake didn't hide the arrests. He made them a public spectacle. He had the entire officer corps and every available soldier in the city assembled in the vast, windswept central square.
He stood on a makeshift wooden stage, looking out at the thousands of pale, upturned faces. He knew this was the point of no return. He was breaking the Party's chain of command in the most public, violent way imaginable. He was ruling through pure terror, becoming the very thing he had once despised.
But then he saw the faces of the starving, lice-ridden soldiers in the front rows, and he knew it was the only way. The only way to win. The only way for them to survive.
Voroshilov and a dozen other high-ranking officers and commissars, exposed by his confession, were marched onto the stage by Cheka guards. Their hands were bound, their faces ashen with the certainty of their own imminent death.
Jake stepped forward, his voice booming across the square, amplified by the cold, clear morning air.
"Soldiers of the Revolution! You have been betrayed!" he roared. "While you bleed in the trenches, these cowards and parasites have feasted! While you starve, they have grown fat! They are traitors not to a party, but to you!"
He paused, letting the words sink in, fueling the simmering anger of the crowd.
"This is not the Party's justice! This is not Trotsky's justice!" he bellowed, his voice raw with fury. "This is the justice of the Southern Front!"
He turned and locked eyes with Taranov, who stood at the side of the stage. He gave a single, sharp, decisive nod.
The Cheka firing squad raised their rifles as one.