The Fifth Party Congress was a war of words—a grinding, endless battle fought with resolutions, amendments, and procedural traps. Inside the cold stone walls of the Hackney church, Jake played his role to perfection.
He was Stalin now—the disciplined politician.
He sat through debates that dragged on for hours, his face unreadable, his voice steady when called upon. Every argument he made was short, practical, grounded in reality. No poetry, no ideology—just precision. He was becoming what Lenin needed him to be: not just a man of action, but a man of politics.
But his mind was somewhere else.
Every hour, every dull speech, his thoughts drifted thousands of miles east—to Tbilisi.
That was where his real war was being fought.
He was conducting an invisible orchestra from London, his baton made of coded messages that crossed continents. And one of those messages, now sitting in a safe house half a world away, was about to change everything.
In Tbilisi, Kamo unfolded the latest cipher by the flicker of a candle.
The message was short. The words burned like ice.
PROCEED WITH OPERATION BEAR.
EXPECT HEAVY RESISTANCE. ENEMY HAS FOREKNOWLEDGE. TRUST NO ONE.
He stared at the page, his pulse steady but his face pale. Soso's warnings were never idle.
If he said the enemy knew, then they knew.
Kamo wasn't stupid. He could read the subtext.
This was an ambush. A death sentence.
But Kamo's faith in Soso was absolute. He didn't see the warning as doom—he saw it as a challenge. If Soso said to proceed, it meant there was a way through. The message wasn't a death sentence; it was a test.
Kamo grinned in the candlelight. He wasn't a robber anymore.
He was a soldier about to walk into a battle—and outsmart it.
In London, Jake couldn't risk saying more.
If the Okhrana intercepted a detailed warning, his "omniscience" would expose him. He had to guide Kamo indirectly—through analysis, not prophecy.
His next message arrived in Tbilisi a few days later. It was written like a report from London's "central committee," but every line was a hidden piece of life-saving intelligence.
London Center's analysis of Okhrana tactics indicates a strategic shift. Static guard posts have been replaced by mobile Cossack cavalry patrols hidden in nearby streets. Future operations must prepare for flanking attacks, not frontal ones.
He was describing the exact historical circumstances of the Tiflis robbery—but dressing it up as deduction.
A few days later, another message followed.
Expect larger armed escorts for all bank transfers. The new police chief is eager to impress the capital. Do not underestimate their numbers.
And finally, the message that tied it all together, cloaked in ideological language.
A revolutionary action's success is measured not in money, but in survival. Preserve cadres above all. An operation without an escape plan is not Bolshevism—it is adventurism.
Each line was a warning. Each phrase, a shield.
In Tbilisi, Kamo absorbed every word. To him, these weren't warnings about a specific job—they were doctrine.
And so, the plan changed.
The simple ambush became a full-scale tactical operation.
Kamo scrapped the old idea of blocking the coach and fighting it out. Now, he prepared for the cavalry that Soso's "analysis" had predicted.
He assigned six men to watch the side streets, armed with flags and whistles to signal the enemy's approach. He ordered more grenades—not to attack the coach, but to seal off escape routes and confuse pursuit. He walked Erevan Square again and again until he knew every brick and sewer grate by heart.
Three escape routes.
Redundancy.
Flexibility.
He was still walking into a trap.
But now, thanks to a man thousands of miles away, he would meet it on his own terms.
Across the city, in the Okhrana headquarters, another plan was unfolding.
Captain Valerian Rostov stood over a map of Erevan Square, calm and confident.
He was new to Tbilisi—fresh from St. Petersburg, handpicked to run Stolypin's new intelligence directorate in the region. The orders from the capital were clear. The intelligence was flawless.
Their mole had provided everything: time, place, and names.
"They're violent," Rostov told his lieutenants, tapping the map with a gloved hand. "But predictable. They'll block the coach and attack the guards."
He pointed to the rooftops. "Marksmen here, here, and here. Once the shooting starts, Captain Suladze's cavalry will charge from this street, Orbeliani's from the opposite side. A perfect kill box. They won't last a minute."
His officers nodded.
It was a flawless plan.
Rostov allowed himself a smile. He would crush the Bolsheviks in one stroke, erase their entire combat wing. Stolypin would remember his name.
His only mistake was believing his intelligence was one-sided.
The day came.
In London, Jake looked pale and sleepless as he prepared to speak on party discipline before the Congress.
In Tbilisi, Kamo's twenty-man team moved through the morning crowds, coats heavy with pistols and grenades.
The sun rose over Erevan Square.
The armored carriage rattled into place.
Cossack patrols waited, hidden.
Bombs lay ready under greatcoats.
Everyone knew their role. Everyone believed they held the advantage.
The hunter and the hunted were perfectly aligned—each convinced the other was walking into their trap.
And somewhere across a continent, a man who didn't belong in this century guided them all like an unseen conductor, his orchestra poised on the brink of history.
Erevan Square looked peaceful beneath the morning sun.
Vendors shouted over their stalls. Children chased pigeons. The bronze statue of a poet stood watch over a crowd that had no idea it was sitting on a powder keg.
But above, behind, and all around, death was waiting.
Men crouched in shadowed doorways. Others lay prone on rooftops, rifles ready. Every alley leading into the square was manned. The air was too still—too expectant.
Hidden inside a second-floor teahouse, Kamo watched through a pair of cheap binoculars. His pulse was steady, his mind razor-sharp.
Soso's warning echoed in his head. The enemy knows.
At exactly 10:30 a.m., the target appeared.
The bank stagecoach rolled into the square, a black, iron-reinforced monster pulled by two horses. But it wasn't alone. Twelve mounted Cossacks rode with it—rifles gleaming, faces hard and ready.
Bait.
Kamo exhaled slowly. "There it is," he murmured. Then he gave a low whistle.
Across the square, Captain Rostov, crouched behind a rooftop parapet, smiled. The rats had taken the cheese. He raised his hand to signal his men.
And then the world exploded.
The first blasts weren't gunshots but thunder—deep, bone-shaking detonations.
Kamo's bombers had thrown grenades—but not at the coach or the Cossacks. They'd hit the streets themselves.
The charges tore the cobblestones apart, filling the air with dust, nails, and splintered stone. Horses screamed. Entire side streets—the very ones the hidden Cossack units were meant to charge from—erupted in flame and debris.
Rostov froze, disbelief written across his face. His perfect plan was burning in front of him. They knew. Somehow, they had known.
Before he could recover, Kamo's second wave struck.
Smaller grenades sailed through the smoke, slamming into the coach and its escort. The square vanished under a curtain of smoke, screams, and shrapnel.
The explosions rolled into one another, echoing like artillery. The crowd panicked—people running, tripping, crying. Horses reared, flailing and shrieking.
And through it all, the sharp bark of Mauser pistols rang out, disciplined and deadly.
Kamo's men had turned Stolypin's trap inside out.
But the Okhrana's plan wasn't finished.
Rostov, shaken but still a soldier, shouted the order.
From the windows and rooftops, his riflemen opened fire.
The square became hell. Bullets tore through fruit stalls, shattered windows, and punched into bodies—soldiers, revolutionaries, civilians, it didn't matter.
The statue of the poet lost its arm in a burst of gunfire.
A seventeen-year-old Bolshevik was hit square in the chest and dropped instantly.
A woman with a basket of bread spun and fell, blood splattering across her loaves.
The Bolsheviks fought back hard but were pinned, their cover disappearing under the hail of lead. One man screamed, clutching his leg; another slid lifeless behind a broken water trough.
It was no longer a robbery.
It was a war.
Kamo moved through the chaos like a machine. Smoke and screams blurred together, but his focus stayed fixed. The square wasn't his battlefield—it was his smokescreen.
While the others traded fire, he led a small strike team straight toward the ruined coach.
Bullets whined overhead.
He didn't flinch.
They tore open the strongbox, the wood blackened and smoking, and pulled out three heavy sacks. The money—enough to fund the revolution for years.
Rostov saw it from his perch and bellowed orders. "At the coach! Fire on the men at the coach!"
But the square was madness now. The smoke was too thick, the civilians too many. The crossfire no longer obeyed anyone.
Kamo looked up through the chaos. His men were dying by the second. He could feel the old instinct—to stay, to fight, to strike back. But then he heard Soso's words in his mind:
A plan without an escape is not Bolshevism.
He gave a piercing whistle—the retreat signal.
Instantly, his men moved. No hesitation. No panic. They pulled back in pairs, firing as they went, vanishing into the narrow alleys of Tbilisi. Each one followed a different path—routes they had memorized for days.
Within minutes, the square was nearly empty of revolutionaries. Only the dead and dying remained.
Rostov stumbled down from his position, the gunfire fading behind him. He stood in the middle of the devastation.
The cobblestones were slick with blood.
His soldiers lay among the wreckage. Civilians cried over bodies.
He turned in a slow circle, trying to understand.
He had been given perfect intelligence. A flawless trap. He had done everything right.
And he had lost.
The Bolsheviks were gone.
The money was gone.
And the square that was supposed to be his victory was a charnel house.
Rostov felt the weight of it hit him all at once. Stolypin would not forgive this.
He looked around the ruined square—the bodies, the shattered coach, the smoke curling into the bright blue sky—and realized the truth that would haunt him for the rest of his life:
The empire's hunters had just met a new kind of prey.
Someone was moving behind the Bolsheviks now—someone ruthless, calculating, and utterly beyond their reach.
Their prized informant had given them intelligence that led straight to disaster.
And the Russian state had just learned the most dangerous lesson imaginable:
The revolution had a mind of its own.