Timur's mind lived in simple math: force in, obedience out. Koba's plan read like geometry he couldn't fold in his head. He heard the words — seize the shipment, use the manhunt — but the connections stayed just out of reach.
He recognized audacity. This was audacity so big it felt like madness. Standing with men who moved by instinct, he knew when he faced a different kind of power. So he did the sensible thing. He deferred.
"My men will be ready," he growled. It was a promise and an oath. He turned and left, boots thudding down the stairs to wake his captains. His footsteps opened the room into a quiet void.
The war-council tension drained away. In its place came a focused hum, the electricity of two minds at work. Koba and Anya leaned over the map and became architects. Fugitive and subordinate slipped; only planners remained.
Anya moved to the table. Skepticism thinned into a surgeon's focus. She knew the city's bones — the crooked officials, the smugglers' lanes, the holes in the police grid. Her knowledge would sharpen his theory.
She tapped the square marked warehouse district. "So we use Timur's men as noise," she said, low and sure. "A loud attack at the wrong warehouse to drag guards away." Not a question. She'd already seen the shape of it.
Koba nodded. "They are a sledgehammer," he said. "Useful, blunt. They smash the north wall, set fires, make a show. While the port's security chases the noise, Pavel and his three slip into Warehouse Seven from the river. The waterfront is light."
They traded problems and fixes like practiced hands. The plan snapped into place.
"What about the naval patrols?" Anya asked. "Their schedule?"
"Randomized after Port Arthur," Koba said, quick as thought. "But the shift change is fixed. At 0500 the night watch swaps with the morning crew. For five minutes both are in the mess on the opposite side. That's our blind spot. Five minutes of near-total blindness on the dock."
Anya's eyes narrowed. "The river gate at Seven is chained and locked. The watch commander keeps the keys."
"We won't need keys," Koba said. Calm. "We'll cut the chain." He glanced at Pavel. "Get a hydraulic bolt cutter. French. It cuts two-inch steel with one squeeze."
Pavel nodded as if asked to fetch bread and melted back into the shadows.
Anya's cool gray eyes showed something like wonder. It wasn't just the tactic. It was the depth of his knowledge — schedules, obscure inventions, minutiae like future ghosts walking through old facts. He seemed less Caucasian outlaw, more an impossible catalog of time and fact.
"You surprise me, General," she said, with a respect that sounded new.
They traced routes on the map. The diversion's timing. The ghost team's sewer approach to the river outlet. The single lantern in a specific window as the signal. A dozen small, tight details that made the whole thing sing.
Meanwhile, far from the teahouse, Pyotr Stolypin sat with the Minister of the Navy. The admiral was a sweating, whiskered thing.
"The Rykov arrest shows rot in the quartermaster corps," the admiral fretted. "He didn't act alone. There are accomplices in the yards. With tensions in the Balkans, theft could be artillery, mines—state-level danger."
Stolypin let him talk himself into the point. Then he cut across the worry with a decision.
"Authorize the Okhrana in the port," he said. "Draft the order. Colonel Sazonov's trusted men will be planted inside the naval warehouses as dockworkers and clerks. Double patrols on the river side. Eyes on every crate, every barge, every man."
With that, Stolypin began to turn the yard's weakest flank into a web of hidden steel. He was about to harden the very vulnerability Koba's plan needed.
Back at the teahouse, the map lay heavy with plotted motion. Anya leaned back with a slow, real smile. The thrill of a clean strategy was unapologetic.
"It's brilliant," she said. "You weaponize the manhunt. Use a five-minute blind spot. Get the rifles onto a barge under the guards' noses."
Her smile vanished. The admiration hardened into a surgeon's inspection. Her eyes pinned him.
"But it has one fatal flaw," she said.
Koba waited. He did not hurry.
"This moves arms," she said. "It doesn't move a man. You will be here, directing. A king at the center of the board. At the end, all the pawns clear away and the king is left exposed."
She tapped the paper with his face on it. "You get the rifles out. But how do you get yourself out? Your face is on every corner. How does the king leave the board when every pawn is watching him?"
They fell silent. Plans can be perfect on paper and lethal in the street. But a face in every window complicates every perfect line. Outside, the city kept looking. Inside, the map waited for an answer.