The silence in the room was a physical weight. Every eye was locked on Jake, a dozen pairs of them, filled with a volatile mixture of expectation, hope, and bloodlust. He could feel Kamo beside him, a coiled spring of violent energy, practically vibrating with eagerness to accept this glorious, suicidal charge. At the head of the table, Orlov's smile was fixed and confident, the look of a chess master who has just announced a checkmate he saw ten moves ago.
Jake pushed his chair back, the scraping sound unnaturally loud in the quiet room. He rose slowly to his feet, his movements deliberate. He didn't look at Orlov. Instead, he let his gaze travel around the table, meeting the eyes of each revolutionary, one by one. He saw the weariness in the face of an old veteran, the fanatical gleam in the eyes of a young student, the grim determination of the female medic from the cellar. He was taking their measure, acknowledging them, making this about them, not about him and Orlov.
"Comrade Orlov is right," Jake began, his voice steady and calm, carrying to every corner of the smoke-filled room.
A collective sigh of relief seemed to pass through the assembly. A few men grinned. Kamo grunted in approval beside him. Orlov's smile widened, the final flicker of victory in his eyes. He had won.
"He is right that we must stop acting like rats," Jake continued, his voice gaining a hard, resonant edge. "But he is wrong to think that lions win by roaring."
A confused murmur rippled through the room. The confident smiles faltered. Orlov's expression tightened almost imperceptibly.
"A bombing is loud," Jake said, his voice rising with a cold, cutting passion that silenced the murmurs. "It is a glorious noise. It is a firework that lights up the night sky and makes the tyrants tremble in their beds for a moment. But it is the roar of a wounded animal, lashing out in pain and desperation. It will kill a few of their policemen, yes. And it will bring the entire weight of the state down upon us. It will get the best of us—our bravest, our most committed—killed or thrown into dungeons. What does that achieve?"
He paused, letting the question hang in the air, letting them truly consider it. "We trade our queen and our rooks for a handful of their pawns. That is not victory. That is sentimental, emotional suicide."
He deliberately used the words "sentimental" and "emotional," weaponizing the party's disdain for bourgeois weakness. He was reframing Orlov's "bold" plan not as courageous, but as naive, undisciplined, and strategically bankrupt.
"True boldness," Jake declared, placing his hands on the table and leaning forward, his gaze sweeping the room like a searchlight, "is not in the loud bang that gets our comrades killed. True boldness is in the silent, patient, intelligent work that guarantees victory. Our problem is not that our teeth are not sharp enough. Our problem is that we are blind."
He tapped the scarred surface of the table with a single, emphatic finger. "The Okhrana knew where to find Mikho. They knew about Arsen's coat. They found the boy Giorgi. Why? Because they have eyes and ears everywhere. They have woven a web of spies and informants throughout this city, and we keep walking into it like stunned flies. We cannot win by throwing bombs at the web. We must kill the spider."
The air in the room was electric now. He had them. He had their fear, their paranoia, and he was giving it a name and a direction.
"Before we start bombing buildings, we must blind our enemy," he continued, his voice dropping to an intense, conspiratorial level. "We must tear out their eyes and their ears. I propose a new primary action. Not 'propaganda of the deed.' I propose a campaign of 'revolutionary counter-intelligence'."
The phrase was perfect. It sounded official, strategic, and far more sophisticated than simple terrorism.
"I will lead a team," Jake said, finally turning his eyes to meet Orlov's. He was no longer a pawn in Orlov's game; he was a player making his own move, seizing control of the board. "But we will not be carrying bombs. We will be carrying knives in the dark. Our targets will not be buildings. They will be the informants. The sources. The traitors who eat our bread and sell our secrets."
He saw a flicker of genuine shock in Orlov's eyes, quickly masked. This was not a response he had anticipated.
"We will hunt the hunters," Jake concluded, his voice ringing with a conviction that was chillingly real. "We will turn their own web of spies against them. We will make them so paranoid, so terrified of their own shadows, that the entire Okhrana apparatus in this city will grind to a halt. They will trust no one. They will question everything. We will rot them from the inside out. That is the longer game. That is how we win."
The room was utterly silent, every member captivated by this new, more insidious, and far more terrifying vision of revolutionary warfare. It was a strategy born of their deepest fears, offering not a glorious, momentary victory, but the promise of total, systemic annihilation of their enemy.
Orlov's smile had completely vanished. His face was a mask of cold, calculating fury. In the space of two minutes, Jake had not only evaded his trap but had also hijacked the meeting, captured the will of the room, and proposed a strategy that was, on its face, far more "Bolshevik" in its ruthless pragmatism than his own. He had lost control.
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