The word landed with the force of a physical blow, heavy and cold as a headsman's axe. Treason.
It hung in the frigid air of the rolling flatcar, instantly poisoning the fragile atmosphere of their hard-won victory. The rhythmic, almost hopeful click-clack of the wheels on the rails now sounded like a death knell, a countdown to their doom. Pavel, Murat, and Ivan stared at Koba, their faces pale and stark in the single lantern's flickering glow, the elation of their successful heist draining away to be replaced by a profound and chilling fear.
Murat, the Chechen whose life had been a long and intimate acquaintance with the state's various cruelties, was the first to fully grasp the change in their predicament. He let out a choked, incredulous laugh that held no humor.
"Treason?" he hissed, the word a venomous whisper. "Treason is not for men like us, planner. That is a word for failed dukes and disgraced generals." He took a step closer, his eyes wide with a terror that was deeper than anything the Okhrana had inspired. "You do not understand. When a gangster is caught, he goes before a judge. He is sent to Siberia. He can escape. He can survive. When a revolutionary is caught, he is interrogated by the Okhrana. It is brutal, but there is a process. There are prisons."
He jabbed a finger, not at Koba, but at the silent, imposing stacks of timber. "But this… this is not the gendarmerie. This is not even the Okhrana. Treason against the military, against the Tsar's navy… that brings the Third Section. Military intelligence. They do not arrest you for treason," he said, his voice dropping to a near-inaudible whisper of absolute certainty. "They do not give you a trial. They simply make you disappear. You become a man who never was. Your family is told you died of cholera. Your name is struck from the records. There is no escape, because officially, you do not exist to be found."
The stakes, which had already seemed impossibly high, had just escalated into a realm beyond their comprehension. This was a game for tsars and ministers, played with armies and fleets, and they had just blundered onto the board armed with nothing but stolen rifles and a desperate plan.
The revelation shattered the group's newfound cohesion. Murat, his face a mask of primal fear, turned on Koba. "We have to dump it all!" he urged, his voice tight with panic. "Now! The rifles, the timber, every last splinter! We push it off this damned train and we jump. We run into the forest and we vanish. We become ghosts again. This is a game for gods and monsters, planner, not for us!"
He was arguing for a regression, for a return to the simple, brutal calculus of survival that had governed them in the forest. It was a direct and desperate challenge to Koba's entire philosophy of progression, of accumulating power.
Koba remained silent. He stood apart from them, staring out into the rushing darkness, the wind whipping at his coat. The frantic, screaming voice of Jake Vance was a tempest in his mind.
[Jake]: He's right! For God's sake, listen to him! This is too big. We have stumbled into the bedrock of the entire Russian state. We stole from the goddamn military-industrial complex! This isn't a crime; it's a declaration of war! We need to run, disappear, buy passage to America, start over! This is not our fight!
[Koba]: Emotional response logged. Fear is a primitive but understandable reaction to a paradigm shift. However, the core logic is flawed. The asset has not decreased in value; it has exponentially increased in value. We were holding rifles, a tactical asset. Now we are holding state secrets and tangible leverage against the military, a strategic asset. Running is a regression. A return to the status of prey. We must advance. We must press the new advantage.
[Jake]: Advantage? It's a loaded gun with the barrel in our mouth!
[Koba]: Every gun has a trigger. The key is to control who pulls it.
Koba turned slowly to face his men, his expression unreadable, his eyes burning with a new and almost insane intensity that silenced Murat's frantic pleading. When he spoke, his voice was cold, sharp, and utterly devoid of fear.
"You are thinking like thieves," he said, the words a quiet condemnation. "You see this timber as a liability, a curse that will bring the wrath of the entire state down on us. You see this ledger as our death warrant. You are wrong."
He stepped forward and picked up the heavy leather-bound book, holding it up in the lantern light as if it were a holy text. "This," he declared, "is not a death warrant. This is the single most valuable asset we have ever possessed. It is more valuable than the rifles. It is more valuable than a crate of dynamite. This ledger details the entire supply chain for the Tsar's new navy. The Gangut-class battleships. His pathetic, desperate answer to the British Dreadnoughts and the German Kaiser-class."
The names meant little to his men, but the absolute authority in his voice held them rapt. Jake's lifetime of historical knowledge, once a useless hobby, now poured out through Koba's lips, a torrent of strategic intelligence that reframed their entire reality.
"An arms race is consuming Europe," he explained, his voice taking on the cadence of a professor lecturing his students. "Germany, Britain, France, now Russia. They are all bankrupting themselves to build these new, massive ships. They believe, correctly, that these fleets of floating steel fortresses will be the key to winning the next great war. And this," he slapped a hand down on the stacked timber, the sound a dull, solid thud, "this specially treated, hardened lumber is a critical, irreplaceable component. Without it, the construction of the new fleet at the Kronstadt shipyards grinds to a halt. Every day they are delayed is a day the German fleet grows stronger and their own grows weaker."
He let the weight of that statement settle in. He was no longer talking about a simple robbery. He was talking about altering the balance of global military power.
"We are no longer four men trying to get to Kiev to rescue a woman," he declared, the words a dismissal of their old, simple life. "That is a child's goal now. Our objective has changed. Everything has changed. We are no longer going to Vologda to beg for help from some backwater Bolshevik cell. We are going to a real city. We are going to Moscow."
He paused, letting them absorb the shift in destination. "And we are not going to trade fifty rifles for train tickets and forged papers. We are going to trade the fate of the Russian Imperial Navy for a seat at the table."
Murat, his face a mask of utter, bewildered disbelief, finally found his voice. "A seat at what table? What are you talking about?"
A slow, chilling smile spread across Koba's lips. It was the smile of a man who could see the entire board, ten moves ahead.
"The only table that matters," he said. "The Bolshevik Central Committee. It is a fractured, pathetic thing, full of exiled intellectuals and powerless theorists. Lenin is in Geneva, writing pamphlets. Trotsky is in Vienna, arguing in coffee houses. The men who are actually here, in Russia, are squabbling over pennies and fighting for scraps. They have no real power."
He held up the ledger again. "We," he said, his voice dropping to a low, conspiratorial whisper, "are going to walk into the heart of the Moscow party organization holding the keys to a national security crisis. We are going to find the most ambitious, most ruthless men in the party—men like Roman Malinovsky, men who understand what real power is—and we are going to offer them something they have only ever dreamed of: real, tangible leverage over the state itself. We will not arrive as subordinates begging for aid. We will arrive as partners, as equals, bringing a dowry that will make us kings."
The sheer, breathtaking audacity of the vision silenced them. He was not just planning a crime or an escape. He was planning a hostile takeover of the entire revolutionary movement, using the Tsar's own war machine as his lever.