The order echoed in the sudden, ringing silence of the room. "We will use the boy as bait."
For a moment, no one moved. It was as if Jake had uttered a blasphemy so profound it had frozen time itself. Pyotr and the other young revolutionary stared at him, their faces a mixture of raw fear and a strange, dawning awe. This was not the hesitant, questioning Soso from earlier in the night. This was someone else.
In Kamo's eyes, however, there was no fear. There was a gleam of dark, approving respect. He saw a comrade who had finally shed his sentimentality and embraced the cold, hard arithmetic of their war. He gave a single, sharp nod.
But then a different sound broke the spell. A soft, shattered gasp.
Kato stepped forward from the shadows of the small kitchen, her hands clasped before her as if in prayer. Her face was ashen, her expression one of utter disbelief. "Soso," she whispered, her voice trembling. "What are you saying? You can't mean that. You can't. He is just a boy."
Her plea struck Jake with the force of a physical blow. A part of him, the Jake Vance who still lived inside, screamed in agreement with her. It wanted to take the words back, to run, to find any other way.
He couldn't. He had made his choice.
He walled off that part of his mind, locking it behind a barrier of ice. He deliberately turned away from his wife's horrified gaze and faced Kamo, forcing his expression into a mask of cold command. To look at her now would be to break.
"How do we do it?" Jake asked, his voice flat and devoid of the turmoil raging within him.
Kamo stepped forward, all business now. "Simple," he grunted, the revolutionary pragmatist taking over. "We get to the street before him. Arsen's flat has a deep alley across from it. We hide in the shadows. They move to grab the boy. We shoot them in the back. Clean. Simple."
Simple. Jake's mind recoiled from the word. But another part of him, a new and terrifyingly clear-headed part, saw the holes in the plan. It was a part of him that had absorbed a century of strategic thinking from books and films, a latent knowledge now bubbling to the surface.
"No," Jake said, shaking his head. "Not simple enough."
Kamo frowned. "What do you mean, not simple enough? It's four of them, surprised. It's an execution."
"It's clumsy," Jake countered, his mind working with a speed that startled him. "The Okhrana aren't fools. They'll have an overwatch. Someone watching the street from a window in an adjacent building. If we all fire from one spot in the alley, they'll have cover, and the overwatch will have a clear target."
He looked around, his eyes landing on a small table with a burnt piece of charcoal from the stove lying on it. He grabbed it and a scrap of wrapping paper. On the rough surface, he began to sketch. Two parallel lines for the street. A box for Arsen's building.
"We create a crossfire," he explained, his voice low and intense. He drew another box across the street. "This is the building opposite. It has a flat roof with a low parapet. I'll take a position there. I'll be the overwatch." He drew a line from the roof to the spot in front of Arsen's door. "You," he said, looking at Kamo, "will take Pyotr and hide in the alley, just as you planned." He drew another line from the alley, crossing his first one. He tapped the point where the lines met. "A fatal funnel. Anyone caught in the middle is trapped. No cover. No escape."
The room was silent again, but this time it was a silence of rapt, horrified attention. Kamo stared at the crude map, his eyes wide with understanding.
"Soso… please," Kato's voice cut through the tactical discussion, choked with a sob. "Listen to yourself. This isn't you. The man I know… the man I married… he wrote poetry about the beauty of the mountains. He didn't draw maps for ambushes."
Her words were a dagger twisting in his gut. He remembered that man, vaguely. The poet. The romantic. The boy who had been crushed and reforged into the man whose body he now wore. He squeezed the piece of charcoal so hard it snapped in his fingers. He did not look at her.
"Pyotr," Jake commanded, his voice strained. "You are with Kamo. Your only job is to watch him. You do exactly as he says. Understood?"
The young man, pale but resolute, nodded mutely.
The men began to move, a sudden flurry of grim, purposeful activity. Kamo checked the cylinder of his Nagant, the metallic click-click-click echoing in the small room. Pyotr was handed a smaller, older revolver, which he held as if it were a venomous snake. The air grew thick with the smell of gun oil and fear.
They were ready. As Kamo moved to the door, Jake took a deep breath to follow.
A hand grabbed his arm. It was Kato. She stood before him, her eyes swimming with tears, her face a portrait of desperate, final appeal.
"Don't do this, Soso," she pleaded, her voice barely a whisper. "I am begging you. If you go out that door tonight… if you do this… the man who comes back won't be the man I married. Don't let them turn you into one of them."
Her words hit him with the force of a prophecy. It was the very core of his own terror, spoken aloud by the one person he was trying to protect. For a fraction of a second, his resolve shattered. The mask of Stalin cracked, and the terrified face of Jake Vance looked out through his eyes. He saw the abyss she was pointing to, and he wanted nothing more than to step back from the edge, to hold her and tell her she was right.
Kamo was at the door, watching him, his expression unreadable. The entire plan, the lives of the men in the room, Kato's own safety, it all hung on this single moment.
With a slowness that felt like agony, Jake reached up and gently pried her fingers from his arm. He couldn't meet her eyes. If he did, he knew he would be lost.
He turned his back on her.
Without another word, he walked to the door, pushed it open, and stepped out into the freezing Tbilisi night.
The latch clicked shut behind him, a small, final sound that severed him from the warmth of the room and the woman he was leaving inside it.
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