The red file sat on the map table like a single, perfect drop of blood.
Lenin reached for it, his eyes alight with a cold, hungry fire. This was it. The weapon. The final, irrefutable proof to crush their enemies.
Jake's hand slammed down on top of the red leather, his fingers covering Lenin's. The room went silent.
"No," Jake said. His voice was quiet, but it had the absolute finality of a closing steel door.
Lenin slowly withdrew his hand, his eyes narrowing to furious slits.
"This is not a sledgehammer for the Party to swing in a dark room," Jake continued, his gaze locked with Lenin's. "This is a scalpel. And it needs a surgeon's hand."
Trotsky stepped forward, his face a mask of intellectual outrage, his voice ringing with indignation. "That document is the property of the Revolution! Its use will be determined by a vote of the Central Committee!"
Jake didn't even look at him. He was speaking to the master of the house, not the barking dog. "A vote?" he said, a humorless smile touching his lips. "You want to bury this in committee meetings? Debate its authenticity for a week while the men on this list shred their records and flee the country?"
He pushed himself off the table, his movement sharp and decisive. "I didn't risk my life and the lives of my men to bring this back for you to file it away."
His voice dropped, becoming a low, dangerous growl. "I brought it to win."
He picked up the file. He turned to leave.
"Where are you going, Koba?" Lenin's voice was dangerously soft, a silken threat.
Jake stopped at the door but didn't turn around. He could feel every eye in the room boring into his back.
"I'm going to the Soviet," he said, his voice clear and hard. "The real one. The one filled with the soldiers who bleed and the workers who starve. I'm going to tell them the truth."
He walked out.
Shliapnikov, who had been standing guard by the door, hesitated for a single, charged heartbeat. He looked back at a thunderstruck Lenin, his face a complex mask of duty and awe. Then he turned, his decision made. He followed Jake out of the room without a word, his heavy footsteps a clear, unambiguous statement of allegiance.
The loyalty of the Party's iron fist had just visibly, irrevocably, shifted.
The Tauride Palace was a madhouse.
Hundreds of delegates from every factory and barracks in Petrograd were packed into the grand, smoke-filled hall. The air was thick with the roar of a dozen simultaneous arguments, the smell of cheap tobacco, and the palpable electricity of a revolution at its boiling point.
On the grand stage, a weak-eyed Menshevik speaker was pleading for unity, for patience, for a coalition government. The crowd wasn't listening. They were restless, angry, hungry for action, not words.
Jake didn't wait for an invitation. He didn't ask for permission.
He walked straight down the central aisle, heading for the stage. Shliapnikov moved in front of him, a human battering ram, shoving aside anyone who didn't get out of the way.
They reached the stage. The Menshevik politician faltered, his words dying in his throat as Jake, this apparition from the front lines, simply walked up the steps and stood beside him at the podium.
Jake didn't say a word. He just waited.
A hush fell over the hall. The shouting and arguing died down, replaced by a wave of whispers. Who was this man? His face was still smeared with soot from the Admiralty. His uniform was torn, stained with something that looked like dried blood. He radiated an aura of brutal, immediate reality that made the politician's well-rehearsed speech seem like a child's fantasy.
This was not a man of words. This was a man of action.
"You want patience?" Jake's voice boomed through the hall, a raw, powerful sound that needed no amplification. It was the voice of a commander. "The men who ask you for patience today are the same men who sell your lives for German gold tomorrow!"
The hall erupted in a confused roar.
Jake raised the red file high above his head. The gaslights of the grand hall caught the polished leather, making it gleam like a death sentence.
"I hold in my hand the proof!" he yelled, his voice cutting through the din like a blade. "Proof that your Minister of War, Kerensky, has been taking money from German bankers to keep this bloody war going! Not to win it! To profit from it!"
A wave of shock and disbelief washed over the crowd.
"I have proof," he continued, his voice rising with righteous fury, "that your Minister of Foreign Affairs, Milyukov, has been secretly promising our land, your land, to the British in exchange for personal loans to line his own pockets!"
He opened the file. His eyes scanned the first page.
And he began to read.
He read out names. He read out dates of bank transfers. He read the numbers from Swiss accounts. He spoke with the cold, dispassionate finality of a prosecutor delivering an execution order. Each word was a hammer blow, shattering the fragile trust the people had left in their new government.
The hall exploded.
It wasn't just shouting anymore. It was a primal roar of pure, undiluted betrayal. Soldiers, men who had seen their brothers die in the trenches for nothing, were shaking their fists, their faces contorted with rage, screaming the names of the traitors. Factory workers, their families starving while ministers got rich, were on their feet, their faces dark with murder, demanding blood.
Jake hadn't just exposed a scandal. He had given their suffering a face. He had given their anger a target.
A single, powerful voice from the Kronstadt delegation started a new chant. "Arrest them! Arrest them!"
The chant was picked up, a low rumble that grew into a thunderous demand that shook the crystal chandeliers. "ARREST THEM! ARREST THEM NOW!"
At that moment, Lenin and Trotsky arrived at the back of the hall, drawn by the earthquake of sound. They stood in the grand doorway, their faces grim, and took in the scene.
They saw Jake on the stage, not as their soldier, not as their agent. They saw him as a king, holding court, the absolute, undisputed center of the revolution's fury. He had bypassed the Party. He had bypassed their authority. He had spoken directly to the soul of the people, and the people had answered him.
Lenin turned to Trotsky, his eyes cold and hard, a terrifying new clarity dawning within them. He saw the future, and he saw a new, more dangerous enemy than the Provisional Government.
"He has crowned himself the People's Tribune," Lenin said, his voice a low, dangerous whisper that was almost lost in the roar.
"And history," he added, his gaze fixed on the powerful figure on the stage, "teaches us that tribunes who grow too powerful must be dealt with."