The decoded words on the page seemed to burn with a cold, black fire.
A loyal whelp. I will find a use for him.
For a long moment, Jake didn't move. The world narrowed to that single sentence. The hiss of the gas lamp, the rattle of a carriage outside — all of it blurred into nothing. The sharp, calculating mind that had just reshaped the future of the Bolshevik Party went still.
Then the memory hit.
He was back in Tbilisi. The stink of blood and smoke. The ringing in his ears after the ambush. Giorgi — the small, silent boy — leaning against a wall, his sleeve soaked red where shrapnel had torn through it. His face pale. His eyes hollow. He hadn't cried. He hadn't screamed. He had simply stopped being a child.
Jake had done that. He had turned a boy into a tool. The first true line he had crossed. The one he had tried hardest to forget. But ghosts never stay buried.
Kamo's words were a death sentence wrapped in logistics. Find a use for him. To Kamo, that meant only one thing — break the boy, then point him toward an enemy. Giorgi wasn't a person anymore. He was material.
Something inside Jake snapped. The instinct wasn't political. It wasn't rational. It was human. A flash of the man he used to be — the teacher who stayed after class for struggling students, who still believed in saving people instead of using them. It was weakness. It was also the last real piece of him.
He acted before he could talk himself out of it.
He pushed the other messages aside and took up a clean page. The words that formed in his mind weren't Kamo, don't hurt him. That would be suicide. Instead, he built his plea out of iron and paranoia — the only language men like Kamo respected.
His pen moved fast.
To Kamo. Priority. Re: Asset Giorgi.
Your assessment is noted. However, the asset is now a security risk. His involvement in the Okhrana ambush makes him a known face. His mental state is unreliable. He has seen too much. Continued use presents an unacceptable liability.
Directive: reassign Giorgi to a permanent, low-visibility post — print shop or kitchen. No courier work. No external contact. This is a security protocol, not a suggestion. Acknowledge receipt.
He leaned back. The handwriting was steady. The tone was perfect — the language of control masking an act of mercy. He had just saved a boy's life by declaring him a liability. It was grotesque. It was also the only way.
He sealed the message, set it aside for the courier, and forced his mind back to the work that mattered — the other war, the invisible one.
The forged tribunal record lay before him, the one he and Shaumian had built word by word. Under the lamp's glow, it looked absurdly official — letterhead, numbered clauses, witness statements that had never existed. It was art masquerading as bureaucracy.
He read through it one last time, admiring its precision. Three judges: Soso, Kamo, Shaumian. The strategist, the enforcer, the ideologue. A perfect trinity. The evidence was detailed but unverifiable, the kind of thing real spies would think only an insider could know.
He could almost picture Stolypin's analysts in St. Petersburg poring over the report, constructing charts, debating the psychology of "Soso." Every conclusion they drew would lead exactly where Jake wanted. He wasn't just hiding from his enemies anymore — he was designing their illusion of him.
He drafted the transmission to Danilov:
Re: Luka Mikeladze affair.
Protocol of internal party trial obtained. Tribunal: Soso (Security), Kamo (Combat), Shaumian (Central Committee). Charges: conspiracy with Menshevik agents, disclosure of strategic information. Evidence: intercepted correspondence, testimony of clandestine meetings. Verdict unanimous. Execution carried out by Kamo per Combat Organization prerogative.
That final line — Kamo as executioner, Soso as judge — tied the fiction together. It was exactly what Stolypin's people expected to find. Brutal. Believable. Complete.
When it was done, Jake sat back, the lamp hissing softly. He had survived every test — Stolypin's trap, Trotsky's pride, Lenin's scrutiny. He had become indispensable. He was the ghost behind the curtain, the hand on the levers of history.
And yet, in the quiet that followed, triumph felt hollow. His thoughts drifted back to Tbilisi — to a dark kitchen, to a boy peeling potatoes, his hands still shaking.
A chill crept through him. Not fear of discovery, but something worse.
He had built a fortress of lies — solid, intricate, unbreakable. But somewhere inside that fortress, he had left a living heart. Giorgi. The boy he had damned and then saved.
And Jake realized, with a sinking certainty, that this small, fragile act of humanity might one day bring the entire machine crashing down.