Kamo moved through Tbilisi like a restless predator. For days he'd been a coiled spring, his squads on a hair trigger, waiting for the order that felt inevitable. He expected Soso to tell him to arm the men, scout the Metekhi Citadel, and plan the blood math of an assault.
Instead, Geneva sent ice.
He sat in the smoky back room, the decoded message flat on the table. Sandro and Davri hovered behind him, reading over his shoulder.
CEASE ALL RESCUE PLANNING. IT IS A TRAP. NEW PRIORITY: LOCATE PYOTR DOLIDZE. FORMER PARTY. GORGA SLUMS. DRUNKARD. TAKE ALIVE, UNMARKED. MOVE HIM TO EREVAN STREET SECONDARY HOUSE. ABSOLUTE SECRECY. THIS IS OUR ONLY PATH. MOVE NOW.
Silence. Water dripped somewhere in the walls.
"What is this?" Davri growled, palm on his Nagant. "Shaumian's in a dungeon and Soso wants a drunk? Has the pressure cracked him?"
Sandro frowned. "Who is Dolidze? Why is this the 'only path'?"
Doubt crept like acid. Kamo felt it too — a cold flicker in the gut. Soso's orders were always brutal, always clean. This one felt… unhinged.
Then Kamo looked at his men. He knew what held the cell together was not just guns or money. It was faith — his in Soso, theirs in him.
He slammed his fist on the table. The paper jumped.
"Enough," he said, voice low and dangerous. "Did you forget Orlov? The rail yard? How many times did his plans look like madness until they weren't? He sees the whole board. We see a square."
He rose, filling the room.
"I don't care who Dolidze is. Soso says find him — we find him. He says this is the path — this is the path. We act."
Resolve snapped back into place.
"Sandro," Kamo ordered, "take three men and keep eyes on the Citadel. Learn the guard rotations, the wagons, the rhythms. Let the Okhrana see us sniffing. Make them waste troops."
He turned to Davri. "You, me, Mikheil, Levan — the slums. We move in one hour."
The Gorgasali district was where hope went to die. Mud alleys. Crumbling tenements. A sour stink of rot, cheap chacha, and human failure. Kamo's men — killers, smugglers, veterans of street wars — became hunters in a place that swallowed names whole.
They leaned on old party ghosts. A baker spat when he heard the name.
"Dolidze?" he said. "A shame that still breathes. Try the chacha holes by the river. He won't stray far from the poison that killed him."
They went deeper. Cellar after cellar. Not taverns — pits. Men slumped over tables like discarded sacks. Eyes flat. Air thick as soup.
They found him in a room that felt like a grave. Slumped over a warped board, clutching a half bottle with both hands. Clothes in rags. Skin filmed with grime. Face swollen, veined with broken capillaries. He stank of stale liquor and weeks without soap.
Kamo felt revulsion. And pity. This is what the end looks like.
Then he saw it — beneath the ruin, the outline. The bone around the eyes. The thinning hairline. Not a mirror, but an echo.
Luka's echo.
"That's him," Mikheil whispered.
Kamo nodded. The grab was fast and silent. Davri blocked the room. Kamo clamped a hand over the man's mouth, Mikheil pinned his arms.
The drunk jolted awake with a wet gasp. Panic flooded his eyes. He thrashed weakly — a kitten fight.
"Quiet," Kamo murmured in his ear. "Do that, and you live."
The man sagged. Trembling.
They hauled him up, half-dragged him through the alley, and shoved him under a tarp in a waiting cart. Thirty seconds, door to door.
On the way to the Erevan Street safe house, unease curled in Kamo's chest. They had their ghost. But what Soso wanted with this wreck — that was worse than any prison wall.
At the first dead drop, Kamo sent a runner toward Batumi, the message already coded:
WE HAVE HIM. A WRECK. AWAITING ORDERS.
In Geneva, permission came through. Lenin wanted Koba back in Tbilisi to "coordinate the response." Everyone assumed it meant a daring break — the kind of spectacle they expected from the Caucasian enforcer.
Jake packed a small bag. His face was stone.
He was going to coordinate a response.
Not to break a wall.
To break a man — and forge a ghost.