The room above the Donbass tavern was steeped in heat and silence. Dust floated in the air, and the stillness was heavy enough to break. Makar lounged in his chair, one arm draped lazily over the table, his open hand pointed toward Kato's bag—a gesture that looked polite but felt like a command.
His gray eyes pinned her in place. They were patient, predatory eyes, belonging to a man who already believed he'd won.
Kato's heart hammered in her chest, but her face showed nothing. Her posture was weary, her gaze lowered—a widow's resignation. Only her mind betrayed her calm, working furiously through every angle, every rule of survival Soso had ever drilled into her.
Both choices were death. Hand over the package, and Yasha would be lost to her. Refuse, and Makar would feed her to the Okhrana or leave her to rot.
So she created a third choice.
When she finally lifted her head, the sorrow was gone. Her voice was low and clear. "Giving you the package makes me useless to you," she said. "It proves my disloyalty once, but once you have it, I'm disposable. That's bad business, Makar. I can offer you something better."
He raised an eyebrow, intrigued in spite of himself. "I'm listening."
"You said your people think Yasha's running a side business," she continued. "But you don't know how big it is. You don't know who he's working with, where his drops are, or how he moves his money. If you strike now, the network scatters. You'll get one egg and scare off the whole flock."
Her words hit their mark. Makar's expression didn't change, but his silence was attentive.
"I'm on the inside," she said. "He trusts me. He calls me his Nightingale. He uses me for his most important deliveries. So instead of buying this package—" she tapped her bag lightly "—why not buy me? Let me keep flying for him. I'll report back to you after every job. I'll give you names, routes, drop points. You'll have his entire operation mapped before he ever realizes he's been betrayed. Then, when you're ready, you'll take everything—clean, silent, complete."
The words hung in the air. A gamble of survival and treachery so precise it almost felt like art.
Makar studied her without blinking. The air between them seemed to hum. Finally, his expression shifted—just slightly—and a cold smile crept onto his lips.
"Yasha is a fool," he said softly. "He found a diamond and tried to spend it as glass."
He rose, crossing to the window, looking out over the coal-dark street. When he turned back, his tone was all business. "The deal stands. Deliver the package. Then go to Kiev. Podil Street. There's a watchmaker there—you'll know him by the passphrase. Leave me a report afterward. It's all written here."
He handed her a folded slip of paper.
"My people will protect you, Anna Petrova," he added, using her alias with a trace of irony. "As long as you remain… useful."
The warning didn't need to be spoken. Her safety was conditional now, bought and leased by the word useful. She'd escaped immediate death only by stepping into a longer, slower one.
Far away, the clatter of a tram bell echoed through St. Petersburg, bleeding into the quiet of a very different room.
Prime Minister Pyotr Stolypin stood before his great map of the empire—a wall of muted color pricked with pins. Every one marked a threat or a tool, a move in the vast game he alone seemed capable of playing.
Behind him, an aide recited the morning's intelligence in the clipped tones of military routine.
"Update on the subject codenamed Nightingale, sir. She did not take the main line to Kharkov as expected." He moved a black pin westward. "She rerouted through the Donbass region. We believe she made contact with a syndicate operative named Makar—a southern enforcer. Her cover remains intact."
Stolypin nodded slowly, eyes still on the map.
"Good," he said. "The criminals will hide her better than the police ever could. They'll protect her, guide her, and without realizing it, keep her on the trail we need. Let her run. She's not the goal—she's the bait. Her husband will find her."
He turned back toward the window. The Moika Canal gleamed under the morning sun, calm and deceptive as the man who watched it.
The door opened again. A second aide entered, breathless, clutching a fresh dispatch. "Sir—urgent from Colonel Sazonov's surveillance unit in Peski."
Stolypin took it, eyes scanning the first few lines.
Target, Captain Dmitri Rykov, left his barracks for the Peski Bathhouse. Standard procedure: gambling session. Entered at three o'clock.
Routine. But then—
Approximately ten minutes prior, another individual entered the same location. Escorted by known criminal Pavel 'the Cyclops.' Well-dressed, military bearing, matches partial description provided by the Menshevik printers: Georgian features, mid-thirties, commanding presence.
Stolypin's breath stilled. The map, the pins, the scattered intelligence—all the threads he'd been pulling suddenly knotted into one.
Rykov.
The bathhouse.
And the ghost.
It wasn't coincidence. It was convergence.
Sazonov's men were waiting outside, likely preparing to move if violence erupted. If they did, the entire operation would collapse in chaos. The Georgian would vanish again.
Stolypin's hand came down sharply on the table.
"Send word to the team," he said. "Immediately."
The aide froze, pen poised.
"The order is HOLD," Stolypin said, voice crisp as glass. "They are not to engage. The new priority is the second man. Photograph him. Identify him. Do not lose him. Under no circumstances is he to leave that building unnoticed."
He turned back toward the map, his reflection dark in the glass.
The net, cast for a corrupt officer, had just tightened around something far more dangerous.
And outside the bathhouse in Peski, the Okhrana's best agents paused mid-step, unaware that the game had changed—
that the man inside, wrapped in another name and another century, was about to alter the course of all their lives.