Kamo's question landed like a blow.
"London? Soso, that's impossible. How can you be in London and still be Stolypin's man in Tbilisi?"
The cellar swallowed the words. For a second the gold, the letter, the triumph—all of it felt distant, useless. Two masters tugged him opposite ways. To follow one was to betray the other.
Shaumian was the first to answer, slow and careful. He paced with his hands behind his back. "The answer is clear, though it is painful," he said. "You cannot go, Soso. Write Lenin back. Explain the security situation. Say the Security Committee needs you. He is a rational man. He will understand. We cannot risk our network for a congress."
Safe. Logical. Cowardly.
Kamo snorted. "No. This is an honor. Lenin summoned you. That lifts us all. We cannot refuse. We go. We cut the line. Danilov stops sending. Let Stolypin wonder. By the time he notices, you'll be back."
Brute force thinking. Simple. Dangerous.
Jake listened to both, then let them finish. He looked at Shaumian, then at Kamo. Calm slid into his voice. "You are both brilliant comrades," he said. "And you are both wrong."
He turned to Shaumian first. "If I refuse Lenin's summons, he will not see prudence. He will see weakness. He will think the 'man of steel' I described is a fraud. The political capital I've won will vanish. We cannot lose that."
He faced Kamo. "And if we go dark, Stolypin won't merely wonder. A man like him burns loose ends. He will assume compromise or betrayal. He will suffocate this city with raids and arrests. He will make an example. We won't survive that."
Silence pressed down. The options were poison.
"So what then?" Shaumian whispered. "You cannot be in two places at once."
A cold smile touched Jake's lips. It was a dangerous kind of grin. "You are correct," he said. "I cannot. Which is why I will not be in two places at once."
Their confusion showed on their faces.
"I will split the role," Jake said. "Soso Jughashvili—the head of Security—remains here. His orders, his presence, his reputation will stay. But Stalin—the delegate—will go to London."
They stared. He leaned in and laid out the plan, a theatrical deception built from lies so precise it could pass for truth.
"First: Danilov," Jake said, nodding toward the locked room. "He is our voice. We will not send a few notes. We will script him. Every few days he sends a report—two months minimum. We'll write everything: power struggles, scares, fake victories. A complete narrative. He will perform it. He will be our ghost in Stolypin's ear."
Shaumian's face paled. "We'll be lying to our own party."
"We will be saving it," Jake answered. "If the story convinces Stolypin, he will be led where we want."
"Second," Jake went on, "Kamo—you become my echo. Walk the streets like me. Issue orders in my name. Be seen at the headquarters at odd hours. Speak with authority. Anyone who asks—tell them I am in strategic planning. We will create an aura. Absence will make the command more feared, not less."
Kamo's jaw tightened. He liked the idea of being seen, of carrying that shadow.
"And Stepan," Jake said, looking at Shaumian, "you handle the politics. Tell the committee I'm on a secret, dangerous mission. Leak details that build awe. Make my absence into proof of my importance, not my cowardice."
Shaumian swallowed. "We are lying to our comrades. If Danilov slips—if one letter reads wrong—if anyone smells a pattern—"
"The rewards outweigh the risks," Jake cut in, steady and cold. "If this works, Stolypin will be fed our script. Lenin gets his delegate. I get access to both the heart of the party and the state's security network. We turn crisis into opportunity."
He paused. The plan was audacious. It required flawless acting from a broken man, absolute loyalty from two others, and a conspiracy that would thread through the city like a needle through cloth.
"We are not just surviving," Jake said softly. "We are building an empire of secrets. With that empire, we will build the future."
They listened. Fear and excitement warred on their faces. The cellar seemed smaller, the stakes larger.
Shaumian finally spoke, small and raw. "If this fails—"
"It won't," Jake said. He sounded like a man who had already calculated the fall and decided he would land on his feet. "Because we will make every lie feel like truth."
Outside, Tbilisi breathed in the dark. Inside, three men turned an impossible demand into an even more impossible plan. The deception would begin at dusk.
The next two weeks turned into a slow descent—part experiment, part imprisonment.
The wine cellar was sealed to everyone except Jake's inner circle. Outside, the city went on as usual—Tsarist patrols, political arguments, whispers of strikes—but inside, there was only one mission: turn a man into a machine.
Jake spent ten, sometimes twelve hours a day with Danilov. Not as a handler, but as a director. A teacher. A tormentor. The small, airless room became their universe. The lantern burned constantly, erasing the difference between night and day.
He began by writing the bible—a thick ledger filled with his cramped script.
It contained everything: two months of a future that didn't exist.
He built an entire fictional life for the Tbilisi Bolsheviks—arguments, pamphlet runs, failed missions, invented names and places. Each entry had dates, outcomes, even fake minutes from meetings. It was obsessive, detailed, and terrifyingly real.
Jake pushed the ledger across the table.
"This is your life now," he told Danilov. "For the next two months, this is all that happened. You'll memorize it until it's memory, not fiction. When Stolypin asks, you'll remember it—not quote it."
The training began.
He would wake Danilov at random hours, lantern light blinding him, voice sharp as a whip.
"Week three—Batumi funds dispute. What was Luka's position?"
"He—he said the miners—"
"Wrong!" Jake snapped. "Luka wanted them held in reserve. Wake up. Stolypin won't give you a second chance."
Every mistake was corrected, drilled, erased. Jake built a tree of responses—what to say, how much to reveal, where to stop.
"If he asks about Shaumian's faction, say they're gaining ground. Give three names, no more. If he asks about weapons, say a quarter were defective. Always understate our strength. Always."
He was overwriting the man's mind line by line.
After two weeks, Jake decided to test him.
Danilov sent his first prewritten report—a complete fabrication about a dispute between "Soso" and Shaumian over the Batumi gold. Soso wanted aggression; Shaumian wanted caution. The committee was divided. The leader looked unstable.
It was perfect bait.
Two days later, the reply arrived. And it was brilliant.
Your report is noted. An excellent chance to widen the cracks. Send five hundred rubles to Kamo's men—say it's from an admirer who values their decisiveness. Report Soso's reaction when he learns his rival was right and his lieutenant has new funding.
Jake read it twice, then felt the chill. Stolypin wasn't just watching—he was moving pieces on Jake's board. A direct test. Divide and conquer. Genius.
Kamo's reaction was instant rage. "The snake! He's trying to buy me—to turn me against you!"
Jake said nothing at first. He paced. The move was dangerous, clever.
Refusing the money would look suspicious. Accepting it would make him seem compromised. He needed something cleaner—a counterstroke that turned the trap back on the hunter.
A slow, cold smile formed. He already saw the move.
The next day, Danilov sent the new message.
Action completed. Result unexpected. Soso discovered the funds' source immediately. Instead of outrage, he laughed. He called a meeting of the rail-yard workers, presented the five hundred rubles, and declared it a donation from a repentant Menshevik. He turned your gift into propaganda. His influence grows. He is more cunning than we thought.
Jake folded the note, satisfied.
He had taken Stolypin's move and turned it into proof of Soso's legend—a legend that didn't even exist.
The ghost was alive.
The final days passed in silence. The bible of lies was finished. Danilov's mind was programmed. Every line of reality replaced with Jake's fiction.
It was time to vanish.
Late one night, Jake stood before a cracked mirror. He took a straight razor and shaved away the thick mustache that had become part of his borrowed face. Then the hair—cut short, almost military. When he looked up, the reflection wasn't Soso anymore.
It was someone new. Harder. Sharper. Nobody.
His forged papers identified him as Vissarion Lomidze, tea merchant. It was almost funny.
He gathered Kamo and Shaumian for one last meeting. He gave them orders, assurances, and the weight of his absence. Then he turned to Danilov—the man he had broken and remade.
"You are Soso now," Jake said quietly. "His voice. His eyes. His will. Don't fail me."
He climbed the steps. The cellar door shut behind him with a dull, final sound.
Below, Danilov sat alone in the lantern light, the ledger open before him. The ghost of a man he wasn't stared back from the page.
And somewhere above, the real ghost was already on the move—heading west, toward London, toward Lenin.