The committee accepted Jake's double-agent plan with almost embarrassing relief. No debate. No probing questions. Just a weary, frightened nod as Shaumian presented the coded note and praised Soso's "brilliant countermeasure." After Orlov's execution, no one in that room wanted to be the one who doubted the man who had proven he could kill quietly and without consequences. Power flowed toward him like water downhill.
But in the damp chill of the wine cellar, the politics meant nothing. All the applause and fear boiled down to one fragile hinge: Danilov.
The terrified man sat on a wooden stool, unbound for the first time in days. He was no longer a prisoner but a tool Jake had to rebuild from scraps. Kamo stood in the corner, arms folded, his silent presence killing any fantasy of escape.
Jake began not with fists, but with facts. "Your Okhrana handler before Orlov took over was Captain Rostov. Tell me about him."
Danilov swallowed. "I—barely knew him. He met me only once—"
Jake cut him off with a sigh. "Rostov drinks expensive Armenian brandy. He keeps a mistress over the bakery on Zubalashvili Street. He steals from the informant fund. That's why your payments were late. Correct?"
Danilov stared as if Jake had peeled the city open brick by brick. Whatever resistance remained in him crumbled instantly.
"Good," Jake murmured. "Now we write your first message."
For an hour the cellar filled with Jake's quiet, deliberate voice. Together they crafted a lie meant to poison the Okhrana's understanding of the revolution: Orlov's "disappearance" framed as an internal purge, Soso portrayed as a rising tyrant, Shaumian painted as a secret rival, the party shown splitting at its seams. A perfect storm of fear, misinformation, and bait.
When it was done, Jake leaned close, voice almost gentle. "You'll deliver this. Word for word. You belong to us now."
Danilov's lip trembled. Jake pressed on.
"And I know what you're thinking. You'll run. You'll talk. But you won't." He let the silence hang, the cruelty deliberate. "Your sister Anya works at the bakery on Madatov Street. Your nephew Misha walks home from Saint Nicholas school every day at four."
Danilov broke. Completely. "I'll do it," he sobbed. "I'll do anything."
Kamo escorted him out to make the drop. Jake stayed behind, staring at his hands—the hands of a man who once lectured teenagers about ethics now used to threaten a child. Disgust flickered. Then, disturbingly, calm. He had crossed another line. He felt nothing stopping him now.
For two days, the cellar held its breath.
Danilov paced like a trapped animal, flinching at footsteps, clinging to Jake with terrified obedience. Kamo simmered with impatience, polishing his revolver again and again. "They're toying with us," he growled. "They'll raid. We should move the arsenal. Move him."
"We do not show fear," Jake said each time, steady but strained. "Panic is a message. We wait."
Even he felt the pressure. Sleep came in ragged scraps. He memorized names, maps of influence, back-alley networks. His brilliant maneuver now felt brittle—balanced on a terrified man's ability to lie correctly.
On the third day, the serpent finally answered.
Luka arrived without expression. "Secondary drop-point," he said. "A note was left."
The cellar snapped to alert. Jake and Kamo fetched the message themselves, taking a twisting route to avoid tails. Under the lantern's pale glow, Jake unfolded the paper. It used the same shorthand as his forged command.
He handed it to Danilov. The man's hands shook violently.
"Read," Jake ordered.
Danilov stammered through it. His face drained white.
"They want to meet me," he whispered. "Face to face."
He read the plain text aloud: MEET US. MIDNIGHT. ST. GEORGE CATHEDRAL. BEFORE THE MAIN ALTAR. COME ALONE.
A cold shiver passed through Jake. This was wrong. Okhrana procedure was dead drops, not meetings in sanctuaries. This was the opposite of a cleanup—this was evaluation.
"They're going to kill me," Danilov choked. "They never do this. Never."
Kamo slammed his fist down. "I knew it. It's a trap. We don't send him."
Jake's voice cut through the panic. "If they wanted him dead, they'd kill his sister. Quietly. Efficiently. No message. No meeting." His mind raced. "This isn't elimination. This is a test. Someone from the capital—someone trained—is checking whether he's still theirs."
The logic was unshakeable. If Danilov didn't appear, they would know he'd turned. If he did appear and cracked under interrogation, everything Jake built would collapse—along with Danilov's family, their cell, the entire counter-intelligence structure.
It was checkmate. He needed a way to be inside the meeting without being seen. To control every reaction, every twitch of Danilov's broken frame.
Then a reckless idea bloomed—audacious, absurd, dangerous.
He turned to Luka. "I need a list of every priest, deacon, and choir boy at St. George Cathedral. Names, schedules, descriptions."
Luka blinked. "Why?"
Jake didn't answer. He turned to Kamo.
"Find me a small choir boy's robe."
The cellar shifted from fear to a new kind of urgency.
As the men scrambled, Jake's mind tightened around the plan forming in the dark: if Danilov had to go into the lion's den, Jake would be in the shadows—close enough to intervene, invisible enough to survive. The cathedral's maze of alcoves and confessionals, the dim candlelight, the choir loft overlooking the altar—he could use all of it.
The Okhrana thought they'd set the terms of this meeting.
They hadn't.
Jake Vance—Soso, the new shadow in the revolution—intended to walk into St. George Cathedral disguised as a boy in a choir robe, unseen and unsuspected, guiding Danilov with invisible cues, ready to act if a single word went wrong.
He had become his own kind of monster.
And the city, watching from the dark, had begun to believe in him.
Not out of love.
Not out of loyalty.
Out of fear.
History wasn't just looking back at him anymore.
It was starting to follow.
St. George Cathedral at midnight was a cavern of stone and silence. The air hung thick with beeswax and the stale perfume of old incense. Candlelight flickered against the faces of saints, their gold halos catching in the dark. Shadows gathered in the corners like watchful ghosts.
From the choir loft, Jake adjusted the hood of the acolyte's robe and tried to slow his heartbeat. The wool scratched against his skin. He smelled dust, wax, mothballs. Below, the nave stretched out like a chessboard waiting for its first move. Kamo and his men were outside, stationed in the graveyard, invisible and useless if things went wrong. Jake was alone.
Hours earlier, he'd rehearsed with Danilov until the man's voice broke. He had coached him not to act brave but to be afraid. "Let them see it," Jake had said. "A liar acts confident. A man telling the truth under fear trembles." Together they built a careful balance of fact and fiction—small truths nested inside a larger lie.
The cathedral clock struck twelve, each bell a deep shudder through the stone.
The side door creaked open. Danilov stepped in, hunched and shaking. He crossed the marble floor toward the altar, every footstep echoing like a confession. He stood beneath the towering icons, head bowed, hands twisting together—a servant awaiting judgment.
Nothing moved for a full minute. Then a man detached himself from the darkness of a confessional. He moved with the soft precision of a cat. No uniform. No swagger. A dark suit, perfectly tailored. A beard trimmed close. He looked like a bureaucrat until you saw the eyes—sharp, cold, alive with control.
"You were told to come alone," he said. His voice was quiet, cultured, precise. That calmness was worse than any threat.
"I am alone, sir," Danilov stammered.
"You seem agitated," the man went on. "The week has been… eventful."
Jake held his breath in the loft. The test had begun.
"The Georgian—this Soso," the man said. "Tell me about him."
"He's a butcher," Danilov whispered, keeping to the script. "He shot Orlov in front of everyone. No trial. We're all terrified. He has his circle—Kamo and the rest—and we obey because we must."
The man circled slowly, measuring every word. "And now? What does he plan?"
"He speaks of control," Danilov said. "Security. He trusts no one. He fights with Shaumian's faction—they say he's destroying the party."
The questions kept coming—smooth, relentless, designed to trip him. The man named comrades, real and fake, to see what flickered across Danilov's eyes. He mentioned meetings that never happened, watched how Danilov reacted. Each line was a trap, and somehow the trembling, broken man danced through them, guided by fear and Jake's earlier drilling.
Finally, the interrogator stopped circling. "Your reports have been… acceptable," he said at last, his tone cool, dismissive. "But your mission has changed."
He stepped closer. "This 'Soso,' this Jughashvili. He appeared from nowhere. No record worth mentioning. And now he controls Tbilisi. My superiors are intrigued—and wary. You will get close to him. You are no longer Orlov's man. You are his. Earn his trust. Learn everything. His habits, his fears, his private alliances. You will be our eyes inside his camp."
In the loft, Jake went still. The realization hit like ice water. He had sent out a puppet to be tested, and the enemy had adopted it. They had turned his double agent into their operative—assigned to spy on Jake himself.
The man from St. Petersburg gave Danilov a new code phrase, a new drop system, and then stepped back into the shadows, vanishing as silently as he'd come.
Danilov stood alone for a long moment, trembling before the altar. Then he turned and fled, his footsteps echoing through the empty cathedral.
Jake didn't move. He stayed crouched among the rafters, heart hammering. He'd done it—outsmarted the Okhrana, inserted his own mole into their network—but victory felt like vertigo.
As the man from St. Petersburg passed below, a flicker of candlelight revealed his face. Jake's breath caught. The beard. The high forehead. The sharp, calculating eyes.
He knew him. Not from this century, but from history. Pyotr Stolypin—the Tsar's Prime Minister. Ruthless reformer. Architect of state terror.
Jake leaned back into the shadows, pulse roaring in his ears. The game had changed again. He wasn't dealing with local enforcers anymore.
He had just stepped onto the empire's grand chessboard—and the man across from him was the Tsar's most dangerous piece.