The news hit the warm, bread-scented room like a thrown brick.
Stolypin's estate. The enemy's inner sanctum.
Kamo looked stunned. "I don't get it," he muttered, rubbing his face. "Why take them there? To kill them? Quietly, away from the press?"
Jake didn't answer right away. His mind was already racing. The ashes of Kato's letter were still cooling in the corner, but the man who'd burned it was gone. What remained was the cold strategist—Stalin incarnate.
"No," he said at last, voice low and tight. "He's not going to kill them. That's what a butcher does, not a statesman. He's going to use them."
Jake began pacing, the pieces falling into place faster than he could speak. "He'll turn them. Make a spectacle of it. Anna, the sons, and Pyotr—all under one roof. He'll rewrite the story. 'The Benevolent Empire Heals a Broken Family, Torn Apart by the Bolsheviks.'"
Kamo blinked, horrified. Jake continued, his tone steady and merciless.
"He'll stand there as the savior—Stolypin the compassionate. The mother and children, grateful. The broken husband, redeemed. The state becomes the hero. The revolutionaries? Monsters who destroy families."
He stopped, eyes burning. "He's taking our weapon and reforging it into his own blade."
Kamo swore under his breath. "Then it's over. He's got them. We've lost control."
Jake turned to him, a dangerous half-smile on his lips. "No. He's made a second mistake."
Kamo frowned. "A mistake? Looks like checkmate to me."
Jake leaned forward, voice low and sharp. "First mistake—he underestimated how deeply a man's past can wound him. Second—he got arrogant. By taking them to his estate, he made it personal. He's brought the game into his home. He thinks he's hosting peasants." Jake's smile widened. "He's just invited me inside."
The old fire was back in his eyes—focused, predatory.
He sat, grabbed paper, and began writing in tight, precise code. "Kamo, this doesn't go through the party channels. Use the military lines. Our man in the War Ministry—the one we call The Accountant."
Kamo's expression hardened. "Danilov."
Jake nodded without looking up. "Tell him this message is to pass directly, without alteration, through his handler to the Prime Minister's desk. For Stolypin's eyes only."
He wrote in silence for several minutes, the scratching of the pen the only sound in the room. Then he handed the paper to Kamo.
"Send it. Priority one."
The message began its journey—through coded relays, through frightened hands. In St. Petersburg, Danilov decoded it in a lavatory stall, his forehead slick with sweat. He re-encoded it into the Okhrana cipher and passed it upward. Within hours, it reached the top.
At dusk, in his private study at Tsarskoye Selo, Pyotr Stolypin sat behind his ornate desk. The meeting with Anna Dolidze had gone exactly as planned. She was hard, but he had found her weakness and played it like a violin. A future. Security. Redemption.
He smiled to himself. His new narrative was taking shape beautifully.
Then Colonel Sazonov entered, face pale. "Your Excellency… this just arrived. Through the Caucasus line. It's… unusual."
Stolypin took the telegram, irritation flickering. He began to read—then stopped.
It wasn't a report. It wasn't even in the usual tone of subordination. The message was short, written in plain, cutting words.
You wish to understand the game.
You are speaking to my pawn and my knight.
You should be speaking to the player.
A private meeting. You and I. No guards, no tricks.
Name the time and place.
Let us resolve this matter like statesmen, not street thugs.
— Soso
Stolypin read it again, then a third time. Slowly, a smile spread across his face—part shock, part admiration.
"He's magnificent," Stolypin murmured. "He's just offered to walk into the lion's den."
Sazonov's voice shook. "It's a trap, Excellency."
"Of course it's a trap," Stolypin said calmly, his eyes gleaming. "The question is—for which one of us?"
He looked down at the signature again. Soso.
After months of shadow-fighting, the ghost had stepped into the light. The two grandmasters had cleared the board. The game had come down to this: one move, one meeting, one outcome that would decide the future of an empire.