The act of writing the message felt like corruption made flesh.
Jake sat at a rickety table in the dim cellar, the lantern light throwing his shadow huge against the wall. His voice was calm, steady, dictating the code while Danilov's trembling hand scratched symbols that would damn men who still called him "comrade." Each mark felt like a small act of treason against everything Jake Vance—the teacher, the idealist—had ever believed in.
But Jake Vance was gone. Only Soso remained. And Soso saw the board, not the blood. The Mensheviks were a weak piece, blocking his advance. To remove them was not cruelty, but geometry. A necessary sacrifice to gain position.
The message went out the next morning through Stolypin's refined dead-drop network—one more secret fed into the dark. Then came the waiting.
For two days, the city held its breath. The Bolsheviks, under Soso's unseen hand, moved with new precision. The Mensheviks, unaware, kept printing calls for unity and democracy—naive, doomed words.
On the third night, the silence broke.
The Okhrana struck with surgical brutality. A midnight raid on the Menshevik committee's "secure" apartment above a bakery. A dozen leaders arrested. Their printing press seized. Membership lists, funding records—gone.
In one sweep, the rival faction in Tbilisi was gutted.
By morning, the Bolshevik headquarters buzzed with whispered satisfaction. Outwardly, they mourned. Shaumian drafted a fiery statement condemning "Tsarist terror against our brothers." But behind closed doors, the tone was different.
"A tragedy," one comrade said, stroking his beard, half-smiling. "Yet… clarifying."
"Perhaps now the workers will see who the true vanguard is," said another.
Their glances turned toward Soso. He said nothing. His silence gave them what they wanted to believe—that he had somehow turned the Okhrana's blade away from them. To them, he wasn't merely a strategist now. He was something darker, more powerful—a man who played on a board none of them could see.
Later, Shaumian found him alone. "Soso," he murmured, "your man—Danilov. This was his doing?"
"He provided the intelligence that let us avoid the raid," Jake said evenly. "We were… fortunate."
Shaumian nodded, satisfied, and didn't press. He gave Soso more funds, more freedom. No one asked what his "Security Committee" actually did. Results were enough.
The victory was absolute—and hollow.
That afternoon, Jake attended a meeting of all the city's socialist factions. The surviving Mensheviks were there: grief-stricken, furious, still clinging to solidarity. He gave a speech that sounded righteous and full of fire. Each word tasted like ash.
Afterward, Noah Jordania, the Menshevik leader, approached him. The man's son had been among those taken. His voice was steady but his eyes were red.
"Thank you for your support, Comrade Soso," he said, offering his hand. "In times like these, we must stand together."
Jake shook his hand. The warmth of it was unbearable. The father of a man he'd just betrayed looked at him with trust—and Jake felt nothing. No shame. No pity. Just emptiness. Whatever was left of Jake Vance was locked somewhere far away, screaming into silence.
He walked home through the drizzle, feeling the weight of his victory like a stone in his chest.
Kamo intercepted him at the cellar door, a folded note in his hand.
"A reply," he said quietly. "From the new drop-point."
Jake opened it, decoding the symbols line by line. The words froze him mid-step.
What is Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov's current thinking on the agrarian question?
Jake stared at the page, his pulse pounding. Stolypin wasn't testing him anymore. The Tsar's Prime Minister had just reached across Russia—and now expected intelligence on Lenin himself.
The board had changed again.
The game was no longer local.
And this time, the opponent was history itself.