The key to the kingdom wasn't a sword. It was a syringe.
Kato, as Sister Anna, finished her third "treatment" on Bogdan's wife. The woman, who had been a pale, shivering ghost just days ago, was now sitting up in bed, a touch of color in her cheeks. The German miracle drug was working.
Bogdan, the iron-willed secretary to Zinoviev, watched Kato with an expression of pure, unadulterated worship. He was a man transformed, his Bolshevik atheism completely replaced by a fervent devotion to the saint who had walked into his life.
"Anything, Sister Anna," he said, his voice thick with an emotion that was close to tears. He took her hand, his touch reverent. "Anything you ever need. You are a miracle. A saint sent to us."
Kato gave him a gentle, beatific smile, her eyes full of a soft, practiced compassion. The lock was broken. The door was wide open.
Her first request was simple, couched in the language of mercy that she now wore like a second skin.
"I hear stories," she said, her voice soft and full of a carefully manufactured concern as they sat in his study. "Terrible stories. Of brilliant men, scientists and doctors from the old regime, being arrested. Thrown into Cheka prisons."
Bogdan scoffed, a flicker of his old Party dogma showing through. "They are bourgeois relics. Parasites. The revolution has no use for them."
Kato pressed, her touch as light as a feather. "But a man of science… his skills are a gift to all mankind, are they not? Not just to one class or another?" She looked at him, her eyes wide and innocent. "I heard of one such man, a brilliant chemist… a Professor Ipatieff. To let such a mind rot in a cell seems… a waste. A sin, even."
Bogdan, desperate to please the woman who had saved his wife, saw not a request for intelligence, but a chance to demonstrate his power and benevolence.
He made inquiries.
He returned the next day, his chest puffed out with pride at his own efficiency. "Your chemist is a prisoner of the state, as he should be," he reported, sitting opposite her. "Considered too dangerous for the common political prisons. The Cheka is holding him in a special facility."
He leaned forward, eager to provide the details. "A fortified sub-basement. Beneath the old Imperial University."
Kato listened, her face a perfect mask of gentle concern. She thanked him with a soft, grateful nod.
The moment he left the room to check on his wife, the angelic mask dropped. The cold, hard face of the spymaster returned. She walked to the window, a silent, dark figure against the Petrograd twilight.
She met with her two agents, the "porters," later that night in the back room of a dingy tavern. They were no longer dressed as smugglers, but as common Red Guards, their uniforms impeccable.
"We have our target," she said, her voice a low, chilling whisper that cut through the noise of the tavern. "Professor Vladimir Ipatieff. I want to know everything about the facility where he's being held. Guard rotations. Entry points. The political officer in charge. Weaknesses. Everything."
Pavel, who had been standing silently in the corner, a ghost in the shadows, finally spoke. His voice was a low, unused rasp. "Why him? A chemist?"
Kato turned, and in the dim, flickering lamplight, her eyes held a flicker of something that was almost excitement. It was a terrifying sight in her dead, hollow face.
"Because he's not just a chemist, Pavel," she said. "Before the war, he was working on something new. Something the Okhrana classified at the highest level. Something Oberst Nicolai was desperate to get his hands on."
Her mind flashed back to the files. The files she had studied, memorized, and then burned in Major Richter's fireplace. It wasn't just about industrial chemicals. It was about physics. Theoretical papers on "atomic disintegration." Notes on strange, glowing ores shipped in lead-lined boxes from German mines in Saxony.
Nicolai's analysts had dismissed it as a scientific fantasy. But one young physicist on his staff had scribbled a terrified note in the margins. If this is real, it's not a new explosive. It's a new kind of fire. The fire of the sun. A weapon that could end the world.
Ipatieff was not the prize. His knowledge was the prize.
Kato knew a frontal assault on a Cheka prison was suicide. They were not fools, and they were notoriously brutal. She needed a different kind of key to open this lock. A key of faith and manipulation.
"Bogdan is our entry," she told her agents, her plan now fully formed, audacious and terrifying in its scope. "He is now my most devoted follower. He believes I am a saint sent from heaven."
A cold smile touched her lips. "I will not break Professor Ipatieff out. I will have him officially transferred into my custody."
The next day, she brought Bogdan a gift. A small, beautifully crafted wooden cross, polished smooth with age. "A gift," she said softly. "For your faith."
He took it as if it were a holy relic, his eyes wet with tears. "Sister Anna, I can never repay you."
"There is one more thing," she said, her voice full of a gentle, persuasive compassion. She placed her hand on his arm, her touch light and warm. "This Professor Ipatieff… his great mind is a gift from God, but his soul is lost. Let me speak to him. As a nurse, as a woman of faith. Perhaps I can convince him to repent his bourgeois sins and serve the revolution."
She looked deep into his eyes. "His knowledge of industrial chemicals could save thousands of lives in the factories. It would be a great victory for the people. Please, Bogdan. Help me save another soul for the cause."
He looked from the simple cross in his hand to the saintly, beatific face of the woman before him. His heart swelled with a fierce, protective devotion. He would do anything for her.
"Of course, Sister," he said, his voice thick with emotion. "I will arrange it at once."
He had no idea he was not helping a saint save a soul.
He was helping a queen steal a crown of thorns. A weapon that could burn the entire world to ash.