Jake found a moment of solitude in a small, unused vestry at the back of the church. The air was cold and smelled of dust and rotting velvet. He sat on a hard wooden bench, the muffled roar of the Congress a distant echo beyond the stone walls.
His hands, usually steady, trembled slightly as he unfolded the note from Tbilisi. The message, written in Kamo's coded shorthand, was short—too short.
Asset has new directive from St. Petersburg. Urgent.
Jake stared at the words, a cold knot tightening in his gut. The quiet weeks, the smooth rhythm of the false reports he'd been feeding Stolypin—those had been the calm before the storm.
The real test had arrived.
He burned the first note with a match, then unfolded the second sheet. It was longer. Denser. And by the time he finished reading, the knot in his stomach had turned to ice.
This wasn't an order. It was a trap.
Stolypin's message came wrapped in flattery.
Your information on Lenin's agrarian position was of the highest value. Your utility is confirmed.
Then came the knife.
We now have an opportunity to cripple the revolutionary movement from within. Our intelligence has identified the primary bases of two terrorist factions: the Socialist Revolutionaries' bomb factory in Geneva, and the Bolshevik Combat Organization's main arms depot in Moscow. We can strike only one. You are to advise which target's destruction will cause the greatest long-term damage. Your assessment will determine the operation.
Jake read it again. And again. Cold sweat prickled down his spine.
It was perfect—too perfect. A trap with no way out. Not a test of loyalty, but of identity.
He broke the problem down automatically, mind slicing through it like a machine.
Option one: recommend a strike on the Socialist Revolutionaries in Geneva. Logical for a Bolshevik. It would destroy a rival faction and strengthen Lenin's hand. But it would also reveal him as partisan, not neutral. Stolypin would see through him instantly. A predictable agent was a controllable one—and a disposable one.
Option two: recommend hitting the Bolshevik arms cache in Moscow. The act of a ruthless, "objective" asset. It would win Stolypin's trust—and annihilate Lenin's fighters, Krasin's men. A betrayal so complete it would destroy him inside, even if no one ever found out.
Option three: evade the question. Offer something vague. That would mean death. Stolypin didn't tolerate hesitation. Ambiguity was treason.
Every path ended in ruin.
It wasn't a fork in the road—it was a cliff.
For a moment, the old Jake surfaced—the teacher, the outsider, the man who didn't belong in this century.
You can't win this. There's no right move.
Then another voice rose to drown it out.
The one that called itself Stalin.
He stood and began to pace the small room, the wood creaking under his boots. He wasn't a man who chose between bad options. He was a man who created new ones.
He needed a fourth path—something unexpected. Something that would make Stolypin believe he was invaluable… while quietly serving his own cause.
His thoughts flickered through names and places like pages in a textbook. Kamo—ruthless, loyal, waiting in Tbilisi. The party's constant hunger for money. And then it came to him.
The Tiflis bank robbery.
Kamo's greatest "expropriation."
A job that would make history—one that, in this timeline, was only weeks away.
An idea, audacious and terrifying, took shape.
He sat back down, breath steady now, and pulled out his cipher book. His pen scratched across the paper with calm precision.
Your question is flawed, the message began. You ask which serpent head to cut—the left or the right. I tell you to strike the heart that feeds them both.
He wrote on, weaving truth and prophecy together.
Both the SRs and the Bolshevik combat squads prepare for a new wave of terror, but they are inert. They lack one thing: funding. The real center of gravity is not in Geneva or Moscow, but here in Tiflis. A large expropriation is being planned—a bank robbery to finance all factions for the year ahead.
He paused, then finished the final line, the killing stroke of his plan:
Seize that money, and you cripple both sides at once. Forget their arms and factories—strike at the gold. Strike in Tiflis.
It was beautiful. Terrible. Perfect.
He had escaped the trap entirely, and made it look like insight. Stolypin would see foresight, brilliance, initiative. And yet the strike would land exactly where Jake wanted—back in his own city, under his own control.
He would "betray" an event that hadn't even happened yet—an operation he would now orchestrate to perfection. A lie wrapped around the truth, turned inside out.
He sealed the message, his hand steady again.
He had just gambled everything—Kamo's life, his cover, his future—on his ability to outthink both history and the most dangerous man in the Russian Empire.
And for the first time, he almost smiled.