A week later, the fugitives were gone, erased from the world. In their place were four middling Austrian merchants and their quiet, severe-looking assistant. The transformation was absolute, a masterpiece of the Party's clandestine arts. The rough, travel-worn clothes had been burned, replaced by sturdy, respectable wool suits, slightly unfashionable but undeniably bourgeois. Their faces were clean-shaven, their hair cut, their hands scrubbed clean of the grime of their former lives.
In their pockets, they carried flawless Austrian identity papers. Not the crude forgeries of back-alley anarchists, but true works of art, created by a master in Riga. They were printed on the correct watermarked paper, filled out in the proper bureaucratic script, and stamped with perfect reproductions of the Austro-Hungarian imperial eagle. Ioseb Djugashvili was now Herr Gregor Schmidt, a timber merchant from Graz. Pavel was his burly business associate, Herr Franz. The Chechens were their assistants, the brothers Muller.
Their transport was equally anonymous and secure. Yagoda had arranged for a sealed goods wagon to be attached to a long, slow freight train bound for Warsaw. From the outside, it was just another drab, featureless box in a long line of them. Inside, it was their world. The rifles, their dowry of steel, were hidden in a cleverly constructed false bottom beneath the wagon's floorboards, along with the foreman's ledger, now wrapped in oilcloth like a sacred text.
Their journey to meet Lenin had begun.
The atmosphere in the dark, cramped space was a strained truce. The rhythmic, hypnotic clatter of the wheels on the rails was the only constant. Koba, Pavel, Murat, Ivan, and Yagoda were confined together, a volatile collection of ambitions and resentments. Yagoda was no longer just a messenger; he was their handler, their guide through the Party's secret pathways to the West. The tension between his assumed authority and Koba's natural command was a palpable, unspoken thing.
"The Chairman is taking a great personal interest in your arrival," Yagoda said one afternoon, his voice smooth as he broke a long silence. He was trying to reassert his position as the conduit to power. "He believes the coming war with Germany is not just a possibility, but an inevitability. A necessary catalyst for the revolution."
He looked directly at Koba. "Your discovery of the Krupp connection is of immense strategic value. It is not just a tool to destabilize the Tsar, as you seem to think. It is a key. A key to understanding the enemy's industrial capacity, their supply chains, and, most importantly, the depth of their influence within our own corrupt state. The Chairman believes in knowing the enemy, intimately."
Koba merely nodded, his face unreadable, offering Yagoda nothing. He understood the subtext. Lenin wasn't just interested in the information as a weapon against Stolypin; he was already thinking like a wartime leader, gathering intelligence for a conflict that had not yet begun.
The train ride was a long, monotonous journey through a landscape of endless, snow-dusted plains and stark, skeletal forests. After two days, the landscape began to change. The towns became more frequent, the architecture subtly different. They were crossing into the Pale of Settlement, into Russian Poland. Finally, with a long, groaning screech of brakes, the train pulled into the sprawling, chaotic freight yards of Warsaw.
The city was a tense, bustling nexus of empires. The air was thick with coal smoke and the murmur of three languages: Polish, Yiddish, and the harsh, commanding Russian of the occupying forces. The station was teeming with the Tsar's presence: gray-coated Gendarmes patrolling the platforms, watchful Okhrana agents in their plainclothes, their eyes missing nothing.
"We switch trains here," Yagoda announced, his voice low and urgent. "Our connection is on the Berlin line. It leaves in two hours. We will be met. We will be guided. Do exactly as I say. Do not speak unless spoken to. You are Austrians who are tired and speak poor Russian. Remember that."
They exited the wagon, blending into the flow of workers and travelers, five anonymous figures in a sea of humanity. Yagoda led them through a labyrinth of sidings and switching yards, away from the crowded passenger platforms, to a quiet, isolated corner of the freight yard. A single figure was waiting for them in the shadow of a massive water tower.
But as they approached, Koba felt a prickle of unease. The man was not what he expected. He was not a hunched, conspiratorial-looking Bolshevik. He was tall, ramrod straight, and dressed in a perfectly tailored, dark German suit that must have cost a fortune. He wore a crisp Homburg hat and held a pair of immaculate leather gloves. He looked less like a revolutionary and more like a banker or a diplomat.
Yagoda approached the man with a visible, almost startling deference. "Herr Schmidt," Yagoda said, his voice respectful. "These are the men I spoke of."
The German, "Herr Schmidt," turned his attention to them. His eyes were a pale, washed-out blue, as cold and clear as ice. He surveyed them one by one, his gaze lingering on Koba for a long moment, an unnerving, analytical stare that seemed to be measuring and assessing him.
He spoke, his Russian perfect, academic, and utterly devoid of any discernible accent. "A pleasure," he said, though his tone suggested it was anything but. "I am here to facilitate the next leg of your journey."
Koba's mind, always processing, always searching for the flaw in the pattern, instantly put the pieces together. The deference from Yagoda. The man's expensive, foreign appearance. His perfect, unaccented Russian. The name, "Schmidt," the very name on Koba's own forged papers—a detail that was either a strange coincidence or a subtle, mocking message.
The Bolsheviks' vaunted escape route, their "underground railroad" to the West, was not their own. It was being facilitated, managed, and perhaps even controlled, by German intelligence.
[Jake]: Oh, God. It's real. We're not just dealing with the Bolsheviks. We're being passed from one spy agency to another. This is it. This is the real beginning of the plot that will bring Lenin back to Russia in the sealed train in 1917. The German General Staff funding and assisting the Russian revolutionaries to destabilize their future enemy. I'm not just a piece in the revolution; I'm a piece in the Kaiser's war plan.
Herr Schmidt seemed to read the dawning comprehension on Koba's face. He offered a thin, humorless smile. "The German General Staff takes a keen and benevolent interest in the activities of Russian revolutionaries," he said, his candor both shocking and chilling. "We find it… mutually beneficial… to ensure that men who wish to cause significant problems for the Tsar's government are able to travel freely. Your passage through Germany to the safety of neutral Switzerland has been arranged."
He was not offering help; he was stating a fact of ownership. They were his cargo now.
The German looked at his pocket watch, a gesture of impatience. "However," he said, his tone shifting from informative to transactional, "before we can allow you to proceed, there is a small matter of administrative necessity."
His cold, blue eyes locked onto Koba's. "We understand you are carrying a certain shipping ledger, taken from a logging operation in the Arkhangelsk Governorate. A ledger detailing certain embarrassing, and strategically vital, collaborations between the firm of Krupp AG and the Russian Imperial Admiralty."
He paused, letting the weight of his knowledge settle. They knew. They knew everything.
"This is… an inconvenience," Herr Schmidt continued smoothly. "It is an embarrassment for certain elements of our own government as much as it is for the Tsar's. Such documents should not be in the hands of… private citizens. Therefore, before we can escort you to your connection, we require that you turn over the ledger. It will be returned to the appropriate authorities in Berlin for secure 'archiving'."
He raised a hand, anticipating an objection. "The information it contains, of course, you are free to carry in your head. Your testimony to your Chairman will be unimpeded. But the physical evidence is now a matter of German state security."
Koba was trapped. He was standing in a Polish rail yard, surrounded by enemies, facing an impossible choice. The ledger was his leverage. It was his power. It was the gun to Stolypin's head. It was the gift that would make him a king in Lenin's court, not just another petitioner. And this cold, calm German was demanding he surrender it in exchange for safe passage.
To refuse was to be trapped in Warsaw, hunted by the Okhrana and, now, by the agents of the Kaiser. To accept was to walk into the meeting with Lenin stripped of his greatest asset, with nothing to offer but a story. His entire, audacious plan depended on that book. His new allies were demanding he arrive disarmed.