The wine cellar was a chamber of cold dread. Moisture clung to the stone walls, each breath hanging in the stagnant air. A single lantern flickered on a barrel, throwing restless shadows that crawled across the floor like living things. Every creak, every drip of water from the ceiling sounded deafening in the stillness.
Danilov sat bound to a heavy oak chair. The ropes bit into his wrists and ankles, his breathing shallow and ragged. Across from him, Kamo loomed—huge, silent, his face a sculpted mask of violence. In one hand, he turned a pair of rusted iron pliers, the metal groaning softly in his grip.
He was ready to begin.
"No," Jake said. His tone was calm, absolute.
Kamo turned, disbelief flashing across his face. "Soso, this isn't Fikus. This one's a butcher. He won't break with talk."
"Pain makes a man scream," Jake said, eyes never leaving Danilov. "Fear makes him speak. There's a difference."
He gestured. "Luka, Davit—wait upstairs. Kamo, stay. But you don't move. You don't speak. You're here to be seen."
Kamo's jaw tightened. He stepped back into the shadows, the pliers glinting faintly in his hand.
Jake dragged a stool across the floor and sat before Danilov. The chair's legs scraped the stone like a warning. For a long time, he said nothing. Only the sound of water dripping from somewhere unseen broke the silence.
Danilov tried to sneer, but it came out as a tremor. "You're dead men," he rasped. "Orlov will gut you all. Hang your entrails from the lamps on Rustaveli Street."
Jake didn't reply. He waited, watching the man's defiance rot under the weight of silence. Seconds stretched until they felt like hours. The dripping water became unbearable.
Finally, Jake spoke—softly, conversationally, as if they were discussing weather. "You met with Orlov three nights ago. The Red Anchor tavern. Back room. He gave you the order there."
Danilov's eyes flicked, the smallest betrayal.
"Two hundred rubles," Jake went on, voice level. "Enough to pay your gambling debts at Madame Elena's. He told you the target was a traitor in custody. A righteous kill. A purge for the good of the party."
The color drained from Danilov's face. The confidence, the swagger—all gone. He looked at Jake as if he were staring at something impossible.
"How… how could you know that?"
"We know everything," Jake said. He leaned forward, his tone still calm, almost kind. "We know about the girl who delivered the message. About the sergeant you feed your winnings to for protection. We know every lie you tell yourself when you look in the mirror."
Danilov's breath came fast. "I don't know what you're—"
Jake sighed. "Kamo."
The scrape of metal filled the air as Kamo stepped forward, the pliers opening with a slow, deliberate creak.
"Wait!" Danilov cried, panic cracking his voice. "Wait! I'll talk!"
Jake lifted a hand. Kamo stopped, frozen.
"Yes," Danilov said, trembling now, his words tumbling over themselves. "Yes, it's true. All of it. Orlov gave the order. He said Fikus was a risk. Yagoda provided the address. It was their plan, not mine! I was just following orders!"
Jake didn't blink. "Why now?" he asked quietly. "Fikus was contained. He posed no immediate threat. Why the urgency?"
Danilov hesitated, searching for a lie. "I—I don't—"
The pliers snapped once, loud in the silence.
"I do!" Danilov blurted, shaking. "It's about a shipment. Tomorrow night. Orlov wanted all loose ends cut before it arrives."
Jake leaned in, the flicker of lanternlight catching in his eyes. "What shipment?"
"Arms," Danilov gasped. "Mausers, dynamite, ammunition—enough to arm a regiment. It's coming by train from Moscow, hidden in flour barrels. They're bringing everyone to receive it. The whole armed wing. Then Yagoda will tip off the Okhrana. They'll hit the warehouse, seize the guns—and us with them."
The room fell into suffocating silence.
Kamo's fingers slackened. The pliers clattered to the floor. "Soso," he whispered, voice hoarse. "They'll kill everyone. We can't warn them in time."
Jake stared at Danilov, the gears already turning behind his eyes. His plan to dismantle Orlov quietly had just collapsed. There was no more time for subtlety, no room for patience. Orlov's trap was already set.
But in that same instant, Jake saw something else.
A new path.
A way to turn disaster into opportunity.
He stood, the faintest spark of dark resolve kindling behind his calm. "Then we won't warn them," he said. "We'll use it."
Kamo looked at him, uncomprehending.
Jake's voice dropped to a whisper, each word sharp as a blade. "If the trap is already set, then we decide who walks into it—and who doesn't."
The lantern's flame guttered, throwing the cellar into trembling shadow. And for the first time, Kamo truly saw it in him—the thing that would one day be feared by empires.
The cold genius of a man who could turn betrayal into strategy.
The air in the cellar seemed to freeze solid around Danilov's final words. The revelation struck like a physical blow, knocking the breath from the room. There was no longer a chessboard, no plan, no order—only a ticking clock and a vision of catastrophe. In less than twenty-four hours, the revolution's entire armed wing would march straight into a massacre.
Kamo's pacing echoed through the chamber. He looked like a man ready to tear through the walls. "We have to warn them," he growled. "Get word to the men at the yard—stop the transfer before it begins!"
Jake's reply cut through his panic like a whip. "And tell them what?" he said sharply. "That an assassin we abducted confessed? They won't believe us. They'll think we're trying to seize the shipment for ourselves. They'll ignore the warning, and the Okhrana will slaughter them anyway."
He was right. They were prisoners of their own secrecy. To speak the truth now was to be dismissed as liars—and in that hesitation, the trap would close.
Jake's mind raced. He saw the faces of the men who would die, the collapse of everything he had built, the city drowning in blood. And then, through the chaos of thought, something cold and bright emerged. A single, razor-sharp idea.
Orlov had given him a disaster. Jake would turn it into a weapon.
"There is one way," he said quietly. The calm in his voice stilled Kamo mid-stride. "We can't stop the trap. So we'll seize the hand that springs it."
He turned, eyes gleaming with a strange, burning clarity. "Get Luka. Send him to Stepan Shaumian. Tell him this: Soso has uncovered a plot that threatens the survival of the party. An emergency meeting of the Central Committee. Now—not later. Use my name. He'll come."
Within an hour, the city's most powerful Bolsheviks had been dragged from their beds and safe houses to the backroom of a print shop. The air buzzed with confusion and irritation. Cigarette smoke curled above the table where they sat, tired and wary, demanding to know why they had been summoned.
At the head of the table sat Orlov. His expression was composed, almost bored, but his eyes flickered with wariness when Jake entered.
Jake didn't sit. He remained standing near the door, one hand resting inside his coat. When the last chair scraped back and Shaumian took his seat, Jake began.
"Comrades," he said, his voice carrying through the room. "We face an existential threat. For weeks, we have believed the Okhrana was working to frame one of our own—Comrade Orlov."
He paused, letting the murmurs swell and die. Then he met Orlov's gaze head-on. "We believed he was their target. We were wrong."
The room erupted. Shocked voices rose, overlapping in confusion and outrage. Orlov shot to his feet, his outrage perfect, almost theatrical. "Soso, have you lost your mind? After everything we've done to expose their lies—"
"The plot was real," Jake interrupted, his voice cutting clean through the noise. "But the traitor who authored it is standing in this room."
The uproar was instant, the room descending into chaos. Orlov pointed at Jake, his voice booming. "He's the liar! This is his coup, his grab for control!"
Jake didn't raise his voice—he roared it. "You want proof?"
The room froze.
"Bring in the witness."
The door burst open. Kamo and Luka stepped inside, dragging a broken, trembling Danilov between them. They threw him to the floor at Orlov's feet.
Gasps rippled through the crowd. Everyone knew Danilov—Orlov's man, his loyal enforcer.
Orlov's face drained of color. His outrage collapsed into something else—real, raw fear.
"This man," Jake said, his voice low and precise, "has a story to tell."
Under Jake's calm, merciless questioning, Danilov stammered out his confession. His words tumbled through the thick silence, each one hammering another nail into Orlov's coffin. He named Orlov as the one who ordered Fikus's execution. He named Yagoda as the accomplice who provided the intelligence. And finally, he told them everything about the train, the arms shipment, the plan to lure the party's entire armed wing into an Okhrana ambush.
When he finished, the room fell deathly still. The weight of the truth was undeniable.
Orlov looked around the table, searching the faces of men who now stared back at him like strangers. His lips parted, but no words came. The mask was gone.
Jake stepped forward. The air in the room seemed to hold its breath.
He had won. But victory wasn't enough. Orlov alive meant danger. Orlov breathing meant revenge. There could be no speeches, no trials. Not here. Not now.
Jake reached into his coat.
The click of the Nagant's hammer echoed like thunder in the tiny room. Every man there flinched.
Kamo and Luka moved without a word, stepping between Orlov and the door.
Jake leveled the revolver, steady as stone. "The party has no time for trials," he said. His voice was calm, but it carried the weight of judgment. "Justice must be swift. Justice must be revolutionary."
For a long heartbeat, no one moved.
Then he pulled the trigger.
The sound was final. The revolution had found its first executioner—and his name was Soso.