The center of the Queen Louise Bridge was a no-man's-land suspended between two worlds. The wind swept down the frozen channel of the Memel River, a raw, biting force that smelled of river ice and distant coal smoke. It whipped at the heavy wool coats of the men, a constant, whining reminder of the implacable cold. Below, the river was a vast, gray sheet of ice, its surface scarred by the wind. Two small groups of men stood fifty paces apart, dark, unmoving figures in the stark white landscape, the silent embodiments of their respective empires.
Koba stood with the hooded, trembling form of Roman Malinovsky at his side. He could feel the traitor's fear, a palpable, animal vibration that traveled up the arm gripping his. Across from him, a beefy Okhrana colonel with a face like frozen beef stood with Kato.
She was a ghost from his past, impossibly real. Thinner, paler, her face etched with a new, hollowed-out weariness, but it was her. Her dark eyes, which he had only been able to see in his memory for so long, were fixed on him. They were not filled with the triumphant joy of a rescued comrade. They were a fire of roiling, conflicting emotions: defiance, despair, and a profound, heartbreaking sorrow.
In that instant, as their eyes locked across the frozen expanse of the bridge, the entire world fell away. The Germans to his left, the Okhrana to his right, the brewing war, the Party, the treason—it all dissolved into a meaningless, gray periphery. There were only the two of them, two souls from a warmer world, meeting in the heart of the winter.
The Okhrana colonel gave Malinovsky a shove forward. Koba, in turn, gently pushed Kato in the opposite direction. They began to walk toward each other, two lonely figures closing the gap in the center of the bridge, their prisoners the collateral in a transaction of souls.
Each step was an eternity. The crunch of his boots on the gritty, snow-dusted planks was the only sound in his world. He saw the way she walked, her back straight, her chin held high, a queen even in her simple prison dress. But as they drew closer, he could see the tremor in her hands, the dark circles under her eyes. This was not the triumphant survivor he had imagined he was freeing. This was a woman who had been dragged through hell.
They met at the exact center of the bridge, a point marked by a small brass plaque in the stonework. For a moment, they just stood there, a foot of air between them, the wind whipping her hair across her face.
"Soso," she whispered, her voice a raw, broken thing that the wind almost stole. It was the name from their youth, the poet's name, not the monster's.
"Kato," he breathed, his voice thick with an emotion he thought he had buried forever. He reached out with his good hand, his fingers brushing her cheek. Her skin was as cold as ice.
"It's a trap," she whispered frantically, her eyes darting towards the Russian side. "He broke me, Soso. He made me… I was supposed to lure you, to tell you a story…" She was trying to confess her "betrayal," to warn him, her words a desperate, jumbled torrent of guilt.
He didn't understand. A part of his mind registered her words, but he couldn't process their meaning. All he could feel was the overwhelming, gut-wrenching relief of having her here, real and alive. "It's all right, Kato," he said, his voice softer than he had heard it in years. "I know it's a trap. I have it under control. It's over now."
But just as he said it, a flicker of movement, a glint of reflected winter light from the high iron latticework of the bridge's arch, caught his eye. It was a tiny detail, something a normal man would have missed. But Koba's senses, honed by a lifetime of paranoia and Jake's inhumanly fast pattern recognition, snagged on it.
A sniper.
His 21st-century mind processed the geometry of the situation in a single, cold, horrifying flash. The angle was wrong. The sniper wasn't aiming for him or the Germans. He was aiming diagonally, towards the center of the bridge. Towards the exchange itself. And he wasn't aiming for Kato. He was aiming for Roman Malinovsky.
The entire, ugly truth of Stolypin's plan crashed down on him. The Prime Minister was never going to let his prize agent, a man who knew so many of the Okhrana's secrets, fall into the hands of German Intelligence, compromised and ready to talk. This wasn't a prisoner exchange. It was a cleanup operation. A public execution disguised as a trade, designed to eliminate a liability and pin the blame on German treachery.
There was no time to think, only to act.
"Get down!" Koba screamed, the command ripping from his throat.
In a single, explosive motion, he shoved Kato hard, sending her stumbling sideways, out of the line of fire. Simultaneously, he grabbed the front of Malinovsky's coat and shoved him forward with all his strength. The hooded, terrified man became a human shield, propelled directly into the path of the approaching Okhrana colonel.
The sharp, flat crack of a high-powered rifle shot echoed across the frozen river, a sound that seemed to shatter the very air.
Malinovsky screamed, but it was not a scream of pain. The Okhrana colonel, who had been reaching out to receive his prisoner, grunted, a red flower blooming suddenly on the chest of his heavy greatcoat. He staggered back a step, a look of profound, stupid surprise on his face, before collapsing onto the bridge.
Chaos erupted.
The German agents, reacting with disciplined speed, drew their pistols, shouting commands in German. The Okhrana agents, seeing their commander fall, did the same, unleashing a volley of wild, inaccurate shots. Pavel, already anticipating trouble, had his Nagant out, laying down methodical, suppressing fire from their end of the bridge, the loud boom of the revolver a counterpoint to the sharp cracks of the Russian pistols.
The bridge had become a shooting gallery, a fifty-yard strip of hell.
In the midst of the gunfire, Koba grabbed Kato's hand, his grip like iron. "This way!" he yelled, pulling her towards the German side, towards the relative safety of his new, treacherous allies.
But then, a new figure emerged from the chaos.
From a customs shed on the German side, a man in a heavy coat and worker's cap appeared, moving with a purpose that was entirely at odds with the panicked civilians who were now running for cover. He held a pistol in his hand, and he was shouting Koba's name.
"Koba! Stop! In the name of the Central Committee, you will come with me!"
It was Comrade Stern. The man from Zurich. The Party's will, made flesh and armed with a gun.
Koba froze, his mind struggling to process this new, impossible variable. He was trapped. In front of him were the Germans, his treasonous paymasters, now engaged in a firefight with their Russian counterparts. Behind him was the Okhrana, his mortal enemies, trying to kill him. And now, cutting off his only path of retreat, was his own Party, come to claim him as a prisoner or execute him as a traitor.
He was caught in the crossfire of three warring worlds, with the woman he had just sold his soul to save clinging to his hand.
He looked at Kato's terrified face, her eyes wide with a fear he had brought upon her. He looked at Pavel, a lone warrior holding back the tide. He looked at the advancing, determined form of Stern, the embodiment of Lenin's cold, unforgiving logic. And he looked at the German agents, who were now glancing back at him, their faces hardening with suspicion.
He had nowhere to run. No allies. No sanctuary.
He made a choice.
With his good right hand, he raised his own pistol. The world seemed to slow down, the shouts and gunshots fading into a dull roar. He didn't aim it at the advancing Okhrana agents. He didn't aim it at the suspicious Germans. He leveled the barrel, his hand steady as a rock, directly at the chest of Comrade Stern.