Stolypin's office was the calm eye of a storm that stretched across an empire. Beyond its soundproofed walls, Russia groaned under the strain of revolt and reform. Inside, the air was still — disciplined, ordered, and heavy with thought.
The Prime Minister sat behind his immaculate desk, not as a bureaucrat, but as a strategist. Reports and telegrams lay before him in precise formation, each one a piece on a vast chessboard that stretched from the Baltic to the Caucasus.
The hunt for the Georgian "planner" was testing his patience. The city-wide search had yielded nothing but noise — false sightings, paranoid tips, useless arrests. The man in the sketch was a ghost. And the violent distraction in the factory district, a display of surgical precision and audacity, had evaporated without a trace.
Then there was the Orlov affair. A terrified official, a ransacked apartment, a German-made safe forced open. Nothing stolen. No ransom demanded. A puzzle made of contradictions.
Stolypin loathed unsolved puzzles.
He was turning this one over in his mind when an aide entered, quiet as a shadow. The man carried a thin file, bound in blue.
"From Tbilisi, Prime Minister," he said. "The morning courier."
Stolypin took it without a word. He opened the file and began to read.
Per your inquiry: Subject Ekaterina Svanidze, escaped custody in Borjomi. Evidence suggests professional assistance. Contacts within the criminal underworld confirm she has reached Kutaisi, likely seeking passage north. Surveillance of major ports and railway stations increased. Capture imminent.
He read the paragraph twice. Then he set the paper down, opened a drawer, and pulled out two more files.
The first — his St. Petersburg enigma. The Georgian planner: male, mid-to-late twenties, educated, left arm favored.
The second — older, thicker, marked with the name Dzhugashvili, I.V.
He flipped to the page he remembered.
Age: twenty-nine. Ethnicity: Georgian. Alias: Koba. Defect: congenital weakness, left arm shorter, less mobile.
He froze. Favors left arm.
Not an injury. A birth defect.
He placed the files side by side. On one side, a ghost tearing through the capital. On the other, a fugitive wife slipping through the Caucasus.
A lesser man would have seen two cases. Two problems.
Stolypin saw one.
He leaned back, the edges of the puzzle aligning in his mind. A wife escapes — not by luck, but with organized help. At the same time, a Georgian revolutionary appears in the capital, conducting impossible operations — bold, precise, yet oddly personal. A break-in that takes nothing of value except letters.
Why?
Because it was never about money.
A fanatic would steal for the cause. A man in love would steal for a person.
He wasn't funding a revolution. He was funding a rescue.
Stolypin rose, crossing to the wall-sized map of the empire. His gaze swept across it — lines, railways, borders, pressure points. He was no longer looking at provinces. He was tracing the path of two converging destinies.
"Not Finland," he murmured. "Not now. She's moving north. He'll move south. They'll meet in the middle. Somewhere chaotic. Ukraine, perhaps. Kharkov…"
His finger stopped. A railway hub, an industrial city teeming with smugglers and revolutionaries. A perfect trap.
He turned sharply to his aide. "Get me the Minister of Railways. I want every route from the Caucasus to the north — official and unofficial. Then get me Director Kasparov in Tbilisi. Direct line."
The aide hurried out.
When he returned, Stolypin was still at the map, his finger pressed against Kharkov like a nail in the coffin of an unseen enemy.
"New orders for the Caucasus directorate," Stolypin said. "They are to let the woman run. She is not to be touched. But she will be followed — silently, constantly. Every stop, every contact, every train car. She is no longer the target."
A thin smile curved his mouth. "She is the bait."
The world tilted.
Kato — now Anna Petrova — boarded a crowded third-class carriage, her forged papers clutched tight. Hope pulsed in her chest as the train lurched north. She did not notice the two men in plain coats who followed her aboard.
Jake, far away in the sewer, received Kamo's nod. The package for Malinovsky was delivered. The next phase of his plan was in motion.
And in the bright stillness of his office, Stolypin watched the map. The pieces were moving, his trap already closing.
He no longer needed to hunt the wolf.
He only had to follow the wolf's mate.