The fog off the Thames hung thick and wet, blurring the city into silence. It felt like the world had shrunk to a single bench by the river — and the two men sitting on it.
Jake's offer hung in the air like a loaded pistol. Gold. Power. Compromise. Each word he'd spoken carried the weight of history yet to be written. He watched Leon Trotsky, a man destined for portraits and textbooks, sit in motionless conflict.
The silence between them was electric. Jake could almost see the gears turning behind Trotsky's sharp eyes. He wasn't weighing money. He was weighing his soul. Jake knew the man too well — the ego, the pride, the desperate need to see himself not as corruptible, but as a visionary. The trick was letting him find a way to justify it.
Jake said nothing. He let the quiet drag on. The first to speak lost — that was a rule he'd learned long before London, long before this river.
At last, Trotsky turned. "You are a creature of… remarkable simplicity, Comrade Stalin," he said. His tone was surgical, each word chosen to cut. "You see the world as levers and weights. You think even the grand forces of history can be moved by gold and blood."
"I think ideas don't load rifles," Jake replied. "Printing presses don't run on faith."
A flicker of disdain crossed Trotsky's face — then something else. Fatigue. Realization. He'd spent years writing, arguing, building castles of theory from exile. Now he was staring at the bricks that could make one real.
"What you offer," Trotsky said at last, voice quieter, "is corruption. The logic of capitalism dressed as revolution."
"Maybe," Jake said evenly. "But sometimes poison is the only cure."
Trotsky let out a dry, humorless laugh and stood, pacing the gravel path. He spoke now not to Jake but to the ghosts of future historians, as if dictating the justification they'd one day quote.
"The Mensheviks," he said bitterly. "Martov believes the revolution will bloom from the spontaneous will of the people. A beautiful fantasy. And fatal." He stopped. "Lenin understands discipline, the need for command. But his world is too small — Russia, not the world. I'm arming the future, not just the Empire."
He turned back, his decision crystallizing. The rationalization was complete.
"This is not a bribe," Trotsky declared. "It's a reallocation of party resources — to the most critical front: the international one."
Jake inclined his head slightly. He didn't need to speak.
"I accept," Trotsky said. "My bloc will support Lenin's statutes. The party must be united under discipline." He lifted a finger. "On two conditions."
Jake's eyes narrowed. "Name them."
"First: the Committee for International Revolutionary Work operates with complete autonomy. No oversight. No interference. It answers only to the cause itself."
"Agreed," Jake said immediately. Autonomy meant nothing when he controlled the purse strings.
"Second," Trotsky continued, "the committee's spending will be audited by a neutral socialist — perhaps from the SPD in Germany. Transparency is essential. We must prove we are not common bandits."
Clever. A moral fig leaf, and an attempt to box him in. Jake almost smiled. Trotsky was trying to leash the beast even as he agreed to feed it.
"An excellent safeguard," Jake said, voice steady. "Accountability builds trust."
He rose and extended his hand.
Trotsky hesitated, then took it. The handshake was dry, firm, final.
And in that instant, Jake felt something he hadn't felt before — not grim necessity, not guilt disguised as strategy, but exhilaration. The raw thrill of control. He had just bent Leon Trotsky to his will. He had reached into the heart of history and turned it, one quiet click of the gears.
He almost smiled — a sharp, involuntary flicker of triumph — before he crushed it down.
They walked back toward the Congress hall through the fog, neither speaking. They weren't allies. They weren't even friends. They were rivals bound by ambition and stolen gold, two predators momentarily hunting the same prey.
As they neared the church that housed the Congress, the muffled roar of debate grew louder — speeches, shouts, the scrape of boots on wooden floors. The air was alive with tension.
Inside, chaos waited. Lenin stood pale and grim, clutching his notes like a lifeline. Across the aisle, Martov whispered to his followers, confidence on his face. He believed Trotsky would never kneel.
The chairman struck his gavel. "Delegates! The final vote on the party statutes will now begin!"
The room fell still. Lenin's eyes met Jake's across the hall. A silent question. Jake gave a faint nod.
Then all eyes turned to Trotsky. He rose slowly, composed, unreadable — a man on the edge of history.
His next words would decide the future of the revolution.