The final days of the Fifth Party Congress were chaos wrapped in ceremony. The long speeches were over; what remained was the real work — bargaining, whispering, trading futures in smoke-filled corners. The debates about ideology had boiled down to votes on procedure, but everyone in the hall knew what was at stake. These "technical" resolutions would decide the soul of the revolution: a disciplined, centralized weapon under Lenin's hand, or a broad, democratic coalition — noble in theory, doomed in practice.
Every ballot was a battle. Every tally felt like a gunshot. The votes swung back and forth by margins so narrow they felt personal. One moment Lenin's camp had the upper hand; the next, Martov's Mensheviks clawed back a victory. The future teetered on a knife's edge.
And on that edge stood Trotsky.
Brilliant, proud, and infuriatingly independent, he was the hinge on which the whole Congress turned. He shared Lenin's end goal but loathed his methods — and he had nothing but disdain for the "barbaric Georgian" who enforced them. His bloc of delegates could tip the balance either way, and everyone knew it. Trotsky was the kingmaker, and he relished it.
Lenin tried to win him with passion and logic, dueling across the Congress floor in a clash of titans. Martov countered with appeals to democracy and principle. But Jake, sitting quietly in the back rows, saw what neither man understood: Trotsky could not be persuaded by argument. His pride was armor. His intellect was fortress and trap all at once. He had to be moved by something beyond rhetoric — by something that could turn ideals into action.
That night, Jake sent word for a private meeting. No pubs. No church halls. A neutral place — a bench by the Thames, shrouded in fog and privacy.
Trotsky arrived with his usual mix of arrogance and curiosity. "Another secret meeting, Comrade Stalin?" he asked, his tone sharp with irony. "You do seem to prefer the shadows."
Jake ignored the barb. He went straight to the point.
"You believe in permanent revolution," he said. "You're right."
The agreement caught Trotsky off guard. Jake pressed on.
"But revolutions aren't fueled by ideas alone. They're fueled by money. Hard money. Gold. The kind that buys presses, weapons, and passage across borders. The party is broke, Leon. Your 'permanent revolution' is a bird with clipped wings."
Trotsky's eyes narrowed. "The will of the proletariat cannot be reduced to accounting."
"Everything can," Jake said flatly. "And I'm telling you — we're not broke."
He laid out his card. Not as a thief boasting about loot, but as a strategist detailing an operation. "My committee in the Caucasus carried out a special expropriation of Tsarist bank funds," he said. "It was disciplined. Controlled. Military. And successful."
Then he named the amount. Trotsky blinked. For once, words failed him. Jake saw the flicker — a spark of calculation, the first crack in the theorist's disdain.
"Here's my proposal," Jake said quietly. "Your bloc can deliver Lenin the centralized party he needs to win. Do that, and I'll allocate thirty percent of the Tiflis gold to a new Committee for International Revolutionary Work — yours to lead. Your theories will finally have a war chest."
He leaned back, voice steady. "Refuse, and the gold funds only what I choose — the domestic front. The choice is yours. Principles or power."
Trotsky said nothing. The fog rolled in from the river, thick and heavy. He stared out over the black water, torn between disgust and desire. Jake could almost see the war in his head — pride against purpose, purity against pragmatism.
Trotsky had been offered everything he'd ever wanted, by the one man he despised most. To accept would be to stain his ideals. To refuse would be to watch them die for lack of money.
He sat in silence, weighing his dream against his soul. Jake didn't press him. He didn't need to. He already knew that once a man began calculating the cost of his purity, he had already begun to spend it.