Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov. Lenin.
The name hit Jake like a hammer. He stood frozen in the middle of the street while the noise of Tbilisi blurred into nothing. The slip of paper in his hand felt impossibly heavy—a direct message from the Tsar's inner circle asking about the very soul of the revolution.
Kamo leaned over his shoulder, frowning. "The agrarian question? Something about peasants, right?" To him, it sounded absurd—too academic, too soft. "Why would a man like Stolypin care about that?"
Jake knew instantly. The "agrarian question" wasn't theory. It was the core of Russia's instability—the land, the peasants, the empire's beating heart. Stolypin was rewriting Russia itself through land reform, trying to build a loyal class of small landowners. Lenin, exiled in London, was shaping a rival vision that could set the countryside on fire.
Stolypin wasn't asking for analysis. He was probing his greatest ideological enemy. This was reconnaissance at the highest level—a question from one architect of the future to another. And Jake, trapped between them, was their unwilling courier.
But he was cornered. His modern knowledge was too general. He understood the theory, but not Lenin's current position in early 1907—the fine details of debates happening in London's cramped revolutionary flats. To guess would expose him. To delay too long would invite suspicion.
He needed the truth.
He needed to ask Lenin himself.
The thought was madness. Stalin—Soso Jughashvili—was a small-time enforcer, a provincial strongman, not a theoretician. Writing directly to Lenin would look arrogant, even ridiculous. But it was the only move he had left.
He locked himself in the cellar and cleared the table. The ledgers and coded reports fell to the floor. One sheet of paper remained. One pen.
He started writing, and failing, and writing again. Each draft died halfway, torn apart by its own tone—too humble, too bold, too clumsy. The floor soon vanished under crumpled attempts. Then, slowly, he found the balance.
He opened with deference:
Comrade Ulyanov, I write to you from Tbilisi, where the struggle against the Tsar is matched only by the confusion sown by the Socialist Revolutionaries…
He described Georgia in vivid, authentic detail, weaving his historical knowledge into a believable present. He painted a picture of workers' debates, of peasants seduced by false promises of simple land division. Then, carefully, he began to flatter.
Your analysis in "To the Rural Poor" remains our guiding light, he wrote. But the SRs twist your words, claiming our call for nationalization is a threat to the smallholder. How do we best counter this distortion? What is the dialectical approach that will win the peasantry to our side? What are the latest resolutions of the London group on this question, so we may align our agitation with the central line?
The letter read as genuine—humble, intelligent, loyal. It was also a perfect disguise for Stolypin's request. Jake was feeding the Prime Minister's question straight to Lenin under the guise of party devotion.
Then came the matter of the signature. He couldn't sign as Soso, the petty thug. Nor as Jughashvili, the Georgian provincial. He needed something sharper, harder—something that sounded like conviction forged into metal.
He remembered an old name, a fusion of his childhood alias and a new self he barely recognized.
K. Stalin.
He signed it, the ink drying like blood. The first time he claimed the name, it felt both triumphant and fatal—a mask he could never take off again.
He sealed the letter and sent it through the underground courier network. It might take weeks to reach London, if it reached at all.
But he couldn't wait empty-handed. That same night, he wrote a second message—this one for Stolypin.
Initial inquiries underway. Ulyanov's stance under discussion. Factional divisions delaying clear statement. Full report to follow.
It was a careful stall, designed to buy time.
When he put down the pen, the room felt smaller, the air heavier. He was now speaking to two of the sharpest minds of his century—Lenin and Stolypin—each capable of remaking or destroying empires.
And he was lying to both.
The cellar's single lantern flickered as he stared at the papers on the table. He was no longer fighting for control of Tbilisi. The battlefield had shifted—to the mind of Russia itself.
Two weeks passed in a tense kind of stillness. The letter to Lenin was gone—cast into the dark waters of the revolutionary underground—and Jake could do nothing but wait. The waiting became its own torture, a low hum of anxiety beneath every task, every breath.
He filled the silence with work. The cellar became the nerve center of something larger and sharper than before. His "security committee" was no longer a band of watchful thugs—it was an intelligence machine. Luka shadowed targets through the taverns; Anna watched the markets and factories; Jake wove their findings into a growing web of connections. He wasn't just fighting enemies now. He was managing paranoia itself.
To keep Stolypin's attention steady but unfocused, he had Danilov send harmless, plausible reports. Quarrels over stolen funds. A rumor of tension between rail workers and bakers. A supposed meeting with Jordania. Each one was crafted to look real but unimportant—a meal of scraps to keep the beast satisfied without ever letting it feast.
When Stolypin finally replied, the message was short—and devastatingly clever.
"Your reports on the party's factionalism are proving useful. You are surrounded by volatile and unreliable elements. To aid in your efforts to… manage… them, we have arranged a gift. A crate of Browning FN Model 1903 pistols awaits you at the port of Batumi. The customs officer there is one of ours. Collect them. Consider this a sign of mutual trust."
Kamo's grin split wide as he read over Jake's shoulder. "He believes us! He trusts Danilov completely! Soso, this is perfect—he's arming us to fight his own kind!" He clapped Jake's back hard enough to rattle his ribs.
But Jake didn't share the joy. His eyes stayed on the coded words, and dread crept up his spine. This wasn't generosity—it was a test.
He ran through the possibilities in silence, his mind flicking through each scenario like moves on a chessboard.
The first trap was crude and obvious: a setup. The "sympathetic officer" didn't exist, and the crate would be bait for an ambush. His men would walk into a massacre. But that was too simple for Stolypin.
The second was more refined: the guns were real, but traceable. Each serial number logged in St. Petersburg. The moment one appeared in a robbery or assassination, the Okhrana would have proof of Bolshevik collaboration. It would destroy them on command.
The third possibility—the real trap—was psychological. Stolypin knew the first two were predictable. He expected any intelligent revolutionary to suspect them and refuse. That was the real test: to see if Danilov's unseen controller was cautious or bold, fearful or fearless. To refuse would mark him as wary, calculating… and therefore not the reckless, desperate type the Okhrana thought it was dealing with. Refusal would expose him.
Jake understood it instantly. Stolypin wasn't offering weapons. He was offering a mirror—to see what stared back.
Kamo's grin faded as he caught the look on Jake's face. "What is it, Soso? You see something."
Jake exhaled slowly. "I see a box with a serpent inside, Kamo. And we're being dared to open it."
He explained the traps—each one, layer by layer—until even Kamo's expression turned grim.
"So we refuse," Kamo said at last. "We walk away."
Jake shook his head. "That's what he expects. That's what any careful man would do." His eyes sharpened. "We'll accept it—but not for us."
Kamo frowned. "Then for who?"
"For the people Stolypin despises almost as much as us," Jake said, the plan crystallizing even as he spoke. "The Dashnaks. The Armenian nationalists. They're desperate for arms. And they have gold."
He outlined it with chilling precision. A disposable intermediary—a nobody from Danilov's network—would broker the deal. The Dashnaks would buy the guns, unaware of their source. Stolypin's weapons would find their way into a different rebellion entirely. The Okhrana would trace them later and see chaos: confusion, infighting, proof of plots that didn't exist. Meanwhile, the Bolsheviks would walk away richer, cleaner, and more dangerous than before.
Jake's mouth curled into a thin, cold smile. "We'll turn his trap into profit. He won't know if we're geniuses or fools. And that doubt—" he looked at Kamo—"that doubt is the most powerful weapon of all."
Kamo said nothing. The audacity left him speechless.
Jake leaned over the decoded message again, the candlelight trembling across his face. The move was insane, impossible, and brilliant.
But then, so was the man making it.