The train sighed to a halt, steam hissing from its joints like an exhausted beast. The flatcar shuddered once, then settled into stillness. In the sudden quiet, the faint hum of the cooling metal was the only sound. Before them stood the small, forgotten station—a ghost of a building at the edge of nowhere.
And there, illuminated by his own lantern, stood Yagoda.
He did not wave, did not speak. He simply waited, the thin curve of his smile catching the light. The cold wind toyed with his coat, but he stood unmoved, a figure carved from ambition and calculation. The sight of him—the impossible precision of his arrival—felt like a rupture in reality.
On the flatcar, the men froze. Murat's expression hardened into pure hostility. "The Serpent," he muttered, the old Baku nickname leaving his mouth like poison. His hand drifted to his pistol, the leather of his holster creaking. "This is a trap."
Pavel's gaze shifted to Koba, steady and questioning. "Planner," he said, voice low, "is he a threat?"
Koba didn't answer immediately. His mind raced, dissecting the scene with clinical precision. An ambush? No—the tracks were empty. Yagoda would not come alone if he meant violence. A coincidence? Impossible. Then what?
Not an attack. An interception.
"He's not a threat," Koba said finally, his voice slow and deliberate. "Not that kind. He's a message."
He made his decision. Running now would mean weakness—and weakness would be fatal. "Stay here," he ordered. "Hands on your weapons, but do not draw. I'll deal with him."
He jumped down from the car, boots crunching against the gravel. His breath fogged in the freezing air as he walked toward Yagoda. There was no fear in his stride. Two men met in the glow of a single lantern—one a master who had forged himself in fire, the other a disciple who had learned too well.
Yagoda inclined his head, the gesture polite, practiced. "Ioseb Vissarionovich," he said, his voice smooth, urbane, faintly mocking. "We were beginning to worry."
The use of his full name was deliberate—a mark of respect wrapped in control.
Koba's face remained unreadable. "How did you find me, Genrikh?"
Yagoda's smile deepened. "You overestimate your invisibility. The Party is not a street gang, Comrade. It is an organism—alive, alert, self-healing. We have eyes in every telegraph office, every railway yard. When a man sets half the capital on fire, steals from the state, and hijacks a train, the organism notices. We have been following your… progress… with admiration."
It wasn't an explanation. It was a declaration: We see everything. You were never alone.
Koba's pulse was steady, but a chill crept into his mind. His "secret war" had been observed, catalogued, analyzed. He was no ghost—he was data. "Who is 'we'?" he asked. "Did Malinovsky send you?"
Yagoda laughed softly. "Malinovsky? He's a mouthpiece. Useful for speeches in the Duma, nothing more. No, my report went higher. To the ones who fund his words. The ones who keep the revolution's machinery oiled and unseen."
Koba understood. The Technical Group. The Party's black budget—their hidden arm that dealt not in ideology but logistics, sabotage, and blood.
"The Committee was impressed," Yagoda continued, the word impressed dripping with irony. "You've achieved what no cell in the north could dream of. Arms. Funds. And now…"—he touched the stacked crates of timber—"…a discovery that shakes the Empire itself. Even we didn't know about Krupp. You've stumbled into something extraordinary."
Something shifted in Koba's mind—a sickening clarity. His grand vision of marching into Moscow, of offering the rifles and the ledger as a partnership, was dead before it began. The Party didn't share power. It consumed it. And Yagoda wasn't here to negotiate. He was here to collect.
"The information you've uncovered," Yagoda said, his tone hardening, "is too valuable to waste on Moscow's squabbling committees. Malinovsky and his kind would turn it into a pamphlet, not a revolution."
He stepped closer, his lantern light casting both their shadows long and sharp across the snow. "You have new orders. The ledger, the data, your full account—all of it—is to be delivered to the Chairman of the Technical Group."
Koba's voice was quiet, controlled. "And where is this Chairman?"
Yagoda let the silence hang for a beat, savoring it. "He's waiting for you," he said at last. "Not in Moscow."
He smiled—a small, triumphant curve of the mouth.
"In Zurich."
The name hit like a hammer. Zurich. Switzerland. Another world entirely. The command wasn't a request—it was exile. Obedience meant abandoning everything: the stolen train, the rifles, the ledger's power. It meant leaving behind the one person who still anchored him—Kato, hunted and alone in Kiev.
For a moment, the night itself seemed to tighten around him. To refuse would mean open war against the Party. To accept was to become a servant again, bound to a distant master.
He held Yagoda's gaze. His voice, when it came, was calm—too calm. "And who is this Chairman?"
The serpent's smile returned, sharp and gleaming. "A man of vision," Yagoda said softly. "A man who understands power the way you do."
He stepped back, the lantern glow painting his thin face gold.
"The man they call Lenin."
The name lingered between them, heavy as prophecy, brighter than the dying light of the lantern.