The silence that followed Jake's speech felt different—charged, electric. It wasn't the hush of waiting anymore. It was the hush of a room that had just been handed a sharp tool and learned how to use it.
They looked at him differently now. Not just Soso, Kamo's bruiser. A strategist. A thinker. The younger men leaned forward; the older ones narrowed their eyes as if weighing a new kind of danger. Even the medic's jaw had tightened.
Orlov recovered first—the politician always ready to reclaim a scene. His hands came together in slow, mocking applause that dragged every gaze back to him.
"An excellent sentiment, Comrade Soso," he said, smooth and flat. "Rhetoric is easy. Revolution is hard." He leaned back as if bored, but his eyes were sharp as knives. "You speak of hunting informants. How do you propose we find them? Do they wear armbands saying 'I betray you'? Or do we simply start pointing fingers at anyone who looks odd?"
It was a practical sting designed to puncture a speech. A plan without targets is a poem.
Jake had expected the jab. He let the silence stretch a beat, then answered with the calm of someone who had already walked through the math.
"We don't need to guess," he said. "We already have a name."
Everyone leaned in. Even Orlov's play-acting slipped; curiosity, maybe alarm, creased his face.
"A tavern near Erevan Square," Jake continued. "A man called Fikus."
For most in the room the word landed like a stone. For Kamo it was a growl of agreement that made the accusation sound like proof. Kamo's affirmation did half the work for him.
"We believe he betrayed the bakery," Jake said plainly. "He's the reason Mikho was taken."
He had linked the freshest wound—Mikho—to a man they could punish. The room inhaled the new direction like a breath of cold air.
"My team's first action will be to neutralize him," Jake said. "Not by burning his place down and alerting every patrol in the city. Quietly. We'll take him and make him talk. We'll learn who he answers to, who else is on the payroll."
Concrete. Tactical. It silenced the romantic fever that had been building.
Then Jake turned the pressure toward Orlov. He folded the old man's thunder into his own plan with a single, casual pivot.
"Comrade Orlov's idea of spectacle isn't wasted," Jake said. "While my team works on Fikus, your men can create diversions—small fires in the warehouses by the river. Enough to pull patrols away from the tavern. A show for the public. Practical. Useful."
A tight line passed across Orlov's face. He'd been outmaneuvered in full view of his peers.
Refuse, and he'd appear cowardly. Refuse, and his command might fracture. He could not oppose the hunt for the traitor who had allegedly given them Mikho.
Orlov forced a smile, the kind that doesn't reach the eyes. "Of course," he said through gritted teeth. "My men will support the operation."
The meeting broke like a wave. Men clustered around Jake, asking questions, offering hands, volunteering for the counter-intelligence squad. He was the new center of gravity.
Kamo pulled him aside, breath hot, face alight with fierce admiration. "By the devil, Soso," he hissed. "You did not just fight him. You took his blade and turned it on him."
Jake nodded without pleasure. He watched Orlov whisper with two lieutenants by the door, saw the venom in the older man's glance as he left.
Victory curdled into clarity. This was not the end. It was escalation. He had publicly humiliated a man who had power, connections, and—most dangerous of all—plausible deniability. Orlov would not forgive. He would not forget.
The game had just become personal. The stakes had just become a matter of life and death.