For two days the cellar held its breath. After Danilov's first drop, silence fell like a lid on their operations — sharp, unnatural, complete. Jake's whole strategy, his hold on power, the fragile safety of a sister and a child: everything swung on the reaction of an invisible opponent.
Danilov was a wreck. He paced his small room like a trapped animal, flinched at every footstep, rattled between ragged sobs and fawning, terrified obedience. He asked the same question a dozen times a day: Did I do it right? Is Anya safe? Jake met him with professional coldness: no comfort, only the unspoken leash.
Kamo was a spring coiled tight with impatience. "They're toying with us," he snarled, polishing the revolver for the tenth time. "They'll raid. Move the arsenal. Move him."
"We do not show fear," Jake said, steady as ever. "We do not change routine. They watch the city, not just us. Panic will be read as weakness. We wait."
Even so, the strain reached Jake. He slept in fits, scoured reports, memorized names and nets of functionaries, trying to map an enemy he could not see. What once felt brilliant now felt brittle — a theory balanced on a ruined man.
On the third day the serpent answered.
Luka came in without expression. "Secondary drop-point," he said. "Loose brick in the market wall. A message was left."
The cellar's tension went electric. Jake and Kamo fetched the note themselves, taking a long, careful route to avoid tails. In the cellar Jake unfolded the paper with a surgeon's calm. It was written in the same shorthand his forged note had used.
He handed it to Danilov. The man's hands shook so badly he could not hold it steady.
"Read it," Jake ordered.
Danilov's voice was thin and raw as he sounded out the code. The color drained from his face. "They want to meet me," he whispered. "Face to face."
He read the plain words aloud: MEET US. MIDNIGHT. ST. GEORGE CATHEDRAL. BEFORE THE MAIN ALTAR. COME ALONE.
A chill slid down Jake's spine. This was wrong. This was not the clumsy work of a provincial captain cleaning up a mess. This was a departure from protocol.
"They never do this," Danilov stammered. "Not for someone like me. Dead drops. Always. A face meeting… it's a cleanup. They'll kill me."
Kamo slammed a fist on a crate. "I knew it. It's a trap. They'll lure him out and finish him. We can't let him go."
Kamo's brute logic was reasonable. But Jake's mind parsed another pattern. The local thugs would have killed quietly: a knife in a side street, a message never written. This? This smelled of craft. Of intent. Of someone who could test, interrogate, and judge without clumsy violence.
"They're not trying to kill him tonight," Jake said, quiet and sharp.
"What?" Kamo barked.
"If they wanted him gone, they'd kill his sister quietly. This is not a cleanup. It's an interview. A test." Jake let the idea settle. "Someone from the capital — a professional. They're checking whether he's still theirs or if he's been turned."
The room tightened. If Danilov went, professionals could break him. The coached lies might unravel under trained scrutiny. The whole double-agent plan could collapse, dragging family and operation down with it. If he stayed away, the absence would tell them everything: asset turned. The Okhrana would redouble their hunt.
Jake looked at the desperate, hollow man and felt the trap close. He needed to control the meeting without being there. He needed to be in Danilov's head, to cue every twitch and word. It seemed impossible.
Then a new, desperate idea took shape — risk piled on risk, audacity on audacity.
He turned to Luka. "List every priest, deacon, acolyte at St. George Cathedral. Names, schedules. Now."
He faced Kamo. "Find me a small choir boy's robe."
The cellar hummed with a different kind of urgency.