The gunshot was a final, declarative crack that slammed the door shut on the night's chaos. Jake's heart stopped. His eyes were locked on the small figure of Giorgi, a lifetime passing in the split second before the bullet found its mark. He saw the boy fall, a puppet with its strings cut.
Then, from the alley below, Kamo reacted with a speed that defied human limits. He spun, raising his revolver, and fired a single, unaimed shot towards the second-story window. It was a shot of pure instinct, a roar of frustration. A pained cry echoed from the window, and the fifth man, the overwatch, disappeared back into the darkness.
All was silent again, a ringing, profound quiet that felt heavier than the noise it replaced. The air was thick with the acrid stench of gunpowder, a metallic, chemical smell that coated the back of Jake's throat.
On the cobblestones, Giorgi began to move. He scrambled up, not dead, not dying, but alive. A raw, piercing scream tore from his throat—a sound of pure, unadulterated terror. He was clutching his arm. A dark patch was spreading on the sleeve of his thin coat, a slick of blood on the dusty wool. The bullet had grazed him. He was alive, but Jake knew with a sickening certainty that a part of the boy had just died in that alley.
The brief, sharp relief of seeing him stand was instantly crushed by the urgent reality of their situation.
"Get down here, Professor!" Kamo's voice roared up from the street, laced with contemptuous urgency. "The work isn't done! Move!"
The title, "Professor," was a deliberate jab, a reminder of Jake's pathetic, shaking miss on the rooftop. He felt a hot flush of shame. He scrambled back from the ledge, his limbs feeling clumsy and disconnected. He holstered the still-warm revolver and clattered down the rickety fire escape, the iron steps groaning under his weight.
When he reached the street, the scene was a Hieronymus Bosch painting rendered in shades of black and gray. The four agents lay in twisted, unnatural positions, dark pools spreading slowly from beneath them on the grimy cobblestones. The smell of blood, coppery and thick, mingled with the gunpowder.
This was the part the heroic revolutionary pamphlets left out. The grim, visceral reality of the cleanup. The butcher's bill.
"Don't just stand there gawking," Kamo snarled, grabbing the sobbing, traumatized Giorgi by the uninjured arm and shaking him slightly. "Pyotr, keep him quiet. Soso, help me. We search them. Papers, weapons, money. Anything. Fast!"
Kamo was already on his knees beside the first body, his hands moving with a practiced, ghoulish efficiency. He stripped the man of his pistol and rifled through his pockets, tossing a cheap wallet onto the stones.
Jake approached the nearest body, his stomach heaving. The man was young, his eyes open and staring sightlessly at the dark sky. A small, neat hole was drilled in his forehead. Jake's mind went numb. He forced himself to kneel, his hands shaking so violently he could barely unbutton the man's coat. The fabric was still warm. He reached into the inner pocket, his fingers brushing against cold, dead flesh.
A wave of nausea hit him with irresistible force. He stumbled back, turned, and retched into the shadows of the alley, his body convulsing as he threw up what little was in his stomach.
"Get it over with," Kamo's voice came from behind him, devoid of sympathy. "We have five minutes before the first curious neighbor calls the police. Move!"
Wiping his mouth with the back of his bloody hand, Jake forced himself back to the task. He worked with his eyes averted, a grim automaton trying to detach from the horror. He took a pistol, a handful of loose cartridges, a pocketknife. He was a ghoul, a battlefield scavenger. He was everything he despised.
He moved to the last body, the one who looked more like an officer, the one Kamo had taken down with brutal finality. This man's coat was of a finer quality. Jake's fumbling, slick hands found a hard, rectangular shape in the inner pocket. It wasn't a wallet. He pulled it out. It was a small, leather-bound notebook, its cover smooth and cool to the touch.
There was no time to examine it. He shoved it deep into his own coat pocket, the small book a leaden weight against his ribs.
"That's enough," Kamo commanded. "Drag them into the deep alley. Now."
They hauled the dead men by their feet, the bodies leaving dark trails on the cobblestones. They piled them in the deepest shadows, a gruesome, temporary tomb. Then Kamo grabbed the still-sobbing Giorgi, and they fled, melting back into the labyrinth of the city's dark, winding streets.
They didn't go back to Kato's. Kamo led them on a circuitous route to the waterfront, to a freezing, damp cellar beneath a sympathetic dockworker's home. The air smelled of bilge water and salt.
Another revolutionary, a grim-faced woman with a medic's bag, took charge of Giorgi, cutting away his sleeve to clean the deep, bloody gash on his arm while the boy stared into space, his mind shattered.
Kamo lit a single, flickering lantern. In its weak, yellow light, he, Jake, and Pyotr gathered around the small leather notebook.
"Let's see what our little investment bought us," Kamo grunted.
He opened the book. The pages were filled with a neat, cramped script. It was a ledger. Jake's blood ran cold. It was a goldmine of counter-intelligence. Names of low-level informants—a baker, a tram conductor, a postman—each with a payment amount listed next to them. There were notes on patrol schedules, on safe houses that had been compromised.
Then, Kamo grunted, pointing a thick finger at one line. "There. Look. Your Fikus."
Jake leaned in. There it was, clear as day. "Fikus - 50 rubles." His lie, his wild guess born of future knowledge, had been the absolute truth. The confirmation sent a chill down his spine.
But his eyes drifted to the next name on the list. A name that didn't belong. A name so shocking, so impossible, it felt like a physical blow to the chest. It was the name of a senior Bolshevik figure, a man in Lenin's inner circle, a man historically considered a lion of the revolution until his eventual purge—by Stalin—years later.
His hand shaking, Jake pointed to the entry. "Look."
Kamo leaned in, his eyes narrowing to read the name. For a long moment, he was silent. Then he straightened up and spat on the dirt floor.
"A forgery," he declared, his voice a low, certain growl. "An obvious Okhrana trick to make us eat each other alive."
"Kamo, it's in the same book—" Jake began.
"It is poison!" Kamo interrupted, his voice rising in fury. He snatched the book from Jake's hand. "That man is a hero! A giant! They want us to believe he is a traitor so we will tear ourselves apart from the inside. This book is a lie, wrapped around a few convenient truths to make it palatable."
He held the notebook over the lantern's flame. "We burn this. Now. Before this poison spreads."
But Jake, with the terrible, cursed burden of his knowledge, knew. He knew how that man's career ended. He knew the accusations that would be leveled against him in the show trials of the 1930s. He suspected, with a sudden, gut-wrenching certainty, that it wasn't a trick. It was the truth.
He had just orchestrated a bloody ambush, had sacrificed a boy's innocence and a piece of his own soul, to gain this one, invaluable, unbelievable piece of knowledge. And his only ally, the man at his side, was about to cast it into the fire.
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