The air in the Zurich apartment felt thin.
It wasn't the altitude — it was the man.
Lenin filled the room not with size, but with force. His presence burned like a small, controlled fire: bright, impatient, all-consuming. His eyes, sharp and alive, swept across the apartment. In seconds, he had read the room, sorted its contents, and filed its occupants neatly in his mind.
He gave a quick, dismissive wave — a command disguised as a courtesy.
"Nadezhda is making tea," he said in his precise, cutting voice. "The rest of you, go. Take a walk. Admire the Swiss order. My business is with your planner."
No one argued. Pavel hesitated only long enough to cast one worried glance at Koba before obeying. The others followed, their boots heavy on the stairs. The door shut behind them with a quiet finality.
Now there were two men left in the room — two minds like blades, testing the edge.
Lenin didn't sit. He went straight to the table, drawn not to Koba's handwritten manuscript but to the battered ledger that had changed hands so many times. He flipped through it with quick, delicate fingers. He wasn't reading; he was absorbing.
After a minute, he closed it with a soft thud. "A fine piece of work," he said, voice dry, almost clinical. "Blackmail material. A tool for agitation. Proof of the Tsar's corruption — and his dealings with the Kaiser. Useful for embarrassing Stolypin in the press. A tactical victory."
He looked up, eyes narrowing on Koba. "Is that what you've brought me, Comrade? Another bank robbery? Another weapon for headlines?"
He was testing him — trying to fit him into a box. Gangster. Agitator. Useful, but replaceable.
Koba didn't blink. The fear inside Jake was locked away behind walls of iron.
"The ledger," he said evenly, "is just a symptom. I've brought you the disease — and the diagnosis."
He nodded to his own stack of papers. "That is the report."
Lenin's eyes flicked to it, interest sparking. He picked it up and began to read — standing, restless, his mind moving faster than his hands. He scanned entire paragraphs in seconds, processing, connecting, calculating.
Then came the barrage.
"Your claim of a German attack through Belgium," Lenin said sharply. "On what evidence? Cafés? Rumors? Britain has treaties to protect Belgium."
"On logistics," Koba shot back. Jake's historian voice guided his words. "The German General Staff fears a two-front war. They need to crush France before Russia mobilizes. But France's border is a fortress. The only path to a quick victory is a right hook through Belgium. The treaties won't matter. They'll gamble that Britain won't act fast enough to stop them."
Lenin made a short, skeptical sound but kept reading.
"You predict a Russian collapse," he said. "You underestimate our peasants. They beat Napoleon."
"I don't underestimate them," Koba replied. "I underestimate their rifles — their shells. They'll fight bravely and die hungry. The factories can't sustain the war they're marching toward. The ledger proves it: even our navy can't build its own rangefinders. What happens when that same rot reaches the army? It'll be bravery against machine guns."
Lenin turned another page, his eyes moving faster. "You describe a war of attrition. Trench warfare. Static fronts. That's absurd. Modern wars are about movement. Decisive battles."
"It's the technology," Koba said quietly. "Machine guns, artillery, barbed wire. A single gun replaces a hundred men. The only defense will be to dig in. Both sides will do it. The front will freeze — from Switzerland to the sea. It'll become a contest of industry and endurance, not genius."
Lenin finished the last page. For a moment, he didn't move. The sharp skepticism in his stance softened into thought. Then he shifted his attack.
"Your analysis," he said, voice slower now, "is materialist. But where is the class dimension? You sound like a staff officer, not a Marxist. War is class struggle by other means. Where is that here?"
The real test.
Koba leaned forward, eyes burning. The moment felt heavy — as if two centuries of history were listening in.
"The class analysis," he said, voice low but fierce, "is the war itself."
Lenin's eyes narrowed slightly. Koba pressed on.
"The bourgeoisie and aristocracy of Europe will send their workers to die for colonies and pride. Russian peasants will march to the front singing the Tsar's songs — and die starving under his banner. They'll see their brothers torn apart by German shells. They'll see trains full of luxuries for generals while they eat mud. And they'll learn."
He leaned closer.
"They'll learn their enemy isn't the German worker across the trench. It's the officer behind them. The banker in Moscow. The Tsar who spends their blood like water."
His voice dropped to a near whisper.
"The trenches will be the revolution's classroom. The war will be the teacher that strips away every lie of nation and faith. When the soldiers return, armed and disillusioned, they'll look for a flag that speaks the truth they've learned. The party that offers it will inherit the world. The rest will drown in the tide."
Silence.
Lenin stared at him. The air between them pulsed with heat — the friction of two burning minds.
Koba had passed every test. He had taken Marx and welded him to the machinery of the future.
He wasn't just another revolutionary.
He was a prophet of the next world.