The night was a frantic race against dawn. The execution had bought them survival at the cost of stability, leaving a vacuum that had to be filled before panic took hold.
In the backroom of a sympathetic bakery, the smell of warm bread hung strangely against the lingering tang of gunpowder and fear. Jake gathered what remained of his leadership—his war council. Kamo was there, his eyes dark but steady. Shaumian sat beside him, calm as ever, his sharp mind already processing a dozen contingencies. Around them were the others—the ones who hadn't broken at the print shop. The ones who were now his.
Jake spread a rough map of the Tbilisi rail yards across the table and pinned it down with teacups. "The arms shipment is all that matters," he said, his voice cutting clean through the exhaustion. "Calling it off is impossible. The Okhrana are watching. Yagoda is watching. If our men don't appear, they'll smell the leak. They'll hunt for us—and they'll find us."
Kamo slammed his fist against the table. "Then we fight them! We ambush them at the yard!"
"A gunfight in the heart of the city?" Shaumian interjected, his voice calm but hard. "The tsar's men would bury us in a day."
Jake looked between them. "No," he said simply. "We won't hide. We won't fight. We'll make them think they've won—and we'll gut them for it."
He leaned over the map, his finger tracing the railway's snaking path into the city. "They expect greed. They expect chaos. So we'll give them what they expect."
He turned to Kamo. "You'll assemble a decoy team. Ten men. Our best performers. They'll go to the freight yard as planned. They'll unload the crates from the designated car, move them to the warehouse, and make it look real. Every movement, every shout, every crate. But those crates will be filled with rocks and sand."
A grim smile spread across Kamo's face.
Jake nodded. "Their job is to hold the Okhrana's attention. Nothing more."
Shaumian leaned forward, eyes narrowing. "And the real weapons?"
Jake's finger slid up the map to a stretch of track two kilometers north of the main yard. "Here. The abandoned siding near the old foundry. That's where we'll take them."
He explained: Nikolay's cousin, a switchman, had been bought off—his loyalty secured by money and fear. When the train approached the city, he would uncouple Car 73, the one carrying the weapons, and divert it onto the abandoned line.
"Kamo," Jake said, "your main force will be waiting there. Quietly. You'll unload the real cargo and move it to the new location."
Kamo's brow furrowed. "Where?"
Jake allowed himself a faint, humorless smile. "The wine cellar. We've already cleared out the previous tenant. It's deep, secure, and no one outside this room knows it exists."
The plan was madness—but it was precise madness. It required timing, trust, and the absolute obedience Jake had begun to command.
The next night, Jake stood on the roof of a tenement overlooking the Tbilisi freight yard. The air was sharp and cold. Through a pair of military field glasses—spoils from Danilov's pockets—he watched the stage he'd built come to life. Below, steam hissed and sparks flared as locomotives idled. His decoy team moved into place, their every gesture rehearsed.
The train arrived, brakes shrieking. Jake watched his men begin unloading, straining under the weight of worthless crates filled with dirt and stone. It was perfect theater—an opera of deception.
A runner scrambled up the stairs behind him, breathless. "Message from Kamo, comrade," he gasped. "Car 73 is on the siding. They've started unloading. No problems."
Jake's grip tightened around the spyglasses. Two parts of the plan, two halves of one heartbeat, working in harmony.
He turned the lenses back toward the yard—and froze.
The shadows were moving.
Dozens of figures emerged from the dark edges of the rail yard—Okhrana agents and uniformed police. They moved like predators circling prey. At their head was a police captain, self-satisfied and smug, already savoring his triumph.
The whistle blew. The trap was sprung.
The agents surged forward, surrounding the warehouse. Jake watched as his decoy team played their part—shouting, scrambling, staging their doomed resistance before allowing themselves to be "captured."
The police stormed in. Shouts echoed, followed by silence. Then, seconds later, the captain emerged again, his victory collapsing into rage. He kicked open a crate—rocks tumbled out, clattering uselessly across the ground.
A small, cold smile flickered across Jake's face. The great Okhrana raid had captured nothing but a pile of stones.
But then the smile died.
Through the spyglass, in a narrow alley at the edge of the yard, two men stood watching the chaos. The first was the high-ranking official Jake had seen in the cemetery. The second, lighting a cigarette with steady, unhurried hands, was Yagoda.
They weren't part of the raid. They were its architects.
Jake focused on Yagoda's face. There was no fury there, no confusion—only calculation. He was already dissecting the failure, piecing together the truth. He knew his trap had been turned inside out. He knew the Bolsheviks had a new hand guiding them, one sharper, colder, more dangerous than anything he'd faced before.
And then, through the smoke, Yagoda looked up.
For a heartbeat, their eyes met across the expanse of the rail yard—two predators recognizing each other in the dark.
Jake lowered the glasses slowly. The night air burned in his lungs. He hadn't just stolen the enemy's victory. He had declared open war on the man who would, in another lifetime, become the executioner of millions.
The game had changed.
And for the first time, Yagoda knew his opponent's name.