The next two weeks turned into a slow descent—part experiment, part imprisonment.
The wine cellar was sealed to everyone except Jake's inner circle. Outside, the city went on as usual—Tsarist patrols, political arguments, whispers of strikes—but inside, there was only one mission: turn a man into a machine.
Jake spent ten, sometimes twelve hours a day with Danilov. Not as a handler, but as a director. A teacher. A tormentor. The small, airless room became their universe. The lantern burned constantly, erasing the difference between night and day.
He began by writing the bible—a thick ledger filled with his cramped script.
It contained everything: two months of a future that didn't exist.
He built an entire fictional life for the Tbilisi Bolsheviks—arguments, pamphlet runs, failed missions, invented names and places. Each entry had dates, outcomes, even fake minutes from meetings. It was obsessive, detailed, and terrifyingly real.
Jake pushed the ledger across the table.
"This is your life now," he told Danilov. "For the next two months, this is all that happened. You'll memorize it until it's memory, not fiction. When Stolypin asks, you'll remember it—not quote it."
The training began.
He would wake Danilov at random hours, lantern light blinding him, voice sharp as a whip.
"Week three—Batumi funds dispute. What was Luka's position?"
"He—he said the miners—"
"Wrong!" Jake snapped. "Luka wanted them held in reserve. Wake up. Stolypin won't give you a second chance."
Every mistake was corrected, drilled, erased. Jake built a tree of responses—what to say, how much to reveal, where to stop.
"If he asks about Shaumian's faction, say they're gaining ground. Give three names, no more. If he asks about weapons, say a quarter were defective. Always understate our strength. Always."
He was overwriting the man's mind line by line.
After two weeks, Jake decided to test him.
Danilov sent his first prewritten report—a complete fabrication about a dispute between "Soso" and Shaumian over the Batumi gold. Soso wanted aggression; Shaumian wanted caution. The committee was divided. The leader looked unstable.
It was perfect bait.
Two days later, the reply arrived. And it was brilliant.
Your report is noted. An excellent chance to widen the cracks. Send five hundred rubles to Kamo's men—say it's from an admirer who values their decisiveness. Report Soso's reaction when he learns his rival was right and his lieutenant has new funding.
Jake read it twice, then felt the chill. Stolypin wasn't just watching—he was moving pieces on Jake's board. A direct test. Divide and conquer. Genius.
Kamo's reaction was instant rage. "The snake! He's trying to buy me—to turn me against you!"
Jake said nothing at first. He paced. The move was dangerous, clever.
Refusing the money would look suspicious. Accepting it would make him seem compromised. He needed something cleaner—a counterstroke that turned the trap back on the hunter.
A slow, cold smile formed. He already saw the move.
The next day, Danilov sent the new message.
Action completed. Result unexpected. Soso discovered the funds' source immediately. Instead of outrage, he laughed. He called a meeting of the rail-yard workers, presented the five hundred rubles, and declared it a donation from a repentant Menshevik. He turned your gift into propaganda. His influence grows. He is more cunning than we thought.
Jake folded the note, satisfied.
He had taken Stolypin's move and turned it into proof of Soso's legend—a legend that didn't even exist.
The ghost was alive.
The final days passed in silence. The bible of lies was finished. Danilov's mind was programmed. Every line of reality replaced with Jake's fiction.
It was time to vanish.
Late one night, Jake stood before a cracked mirror. He took a straight razor and shaved away the thick mustache that had become part of his borrowed face. Then the hair—cut short, almost military. When he looked up, the reflection wasn't Soso anymore.
It was someone new. Harder. Sharper. Nobody.
His forged papers identified him as Vissarion Lomidze, tea merchant. It was almost funny.
He gathered Kamo and Shaumian for one last meeting. He gave them orders, assurances, and the weight of his absence. Then he turned to Danilov—the man he had broken and remade.
"You are Soso now," Jake said quietly. "His voice. His eyes. His will. Don't fail me."
He climbed the steps. The cellar door shut behind him with a dull, final sound.
Below, Danilov sat alone in the lantern light, the ledger open before him. The ghost of a man he wasn't stared back from the page.
And somewhere above, the real ghost was already on the move—heading west, toward London, toward Lenin.