The world on the bridge had contracted to a single, impossible point. Koba's pistol was a black line drawn in the snow-filled air, connecting his will to the chest of Comrade Stern. The shouts of the guards, the sharp crack of pistols, the whining shriek of ricochets off the iron girders—it all faded into a dull, distant roar, the sound of a storm happening in another country.
Jake's mind was a vortex of pure, shrieking panic. Don't shoot him! Don't you dare shoot him! He's one of us! He's the Party! To fire on Stern was to pull the trigger on his own past, on the entire revolutionary cause. It was the one act from which there could be no return, a final, public declaration of his treason. It was a moral event horizon.
But Koba's mind was not in a panic. It was a place of absolute, chilling calm. It was not a moral event horizon; it was a tactical problem. A complex, three-body geometry of a killzone. Surrendering to Stern was suicide; Lenin's justice would be swift and merciless. Firing on Stern was also suicide; the Germans would see him as an unpredictable traitor who had just killed a potential asset, and they would cut him down where he stood. He was caught between the hammer of the Party and the anvil of the German Empire.
He needed a third option.
His decision was not born of thought, but of pure, predatory instinct.
He didn't fire at Stern. He fired next to him.
His pistol bucked in his hand, the report a sharp, clean crack that was distinct from the deeper booms of the Russian Nagants. The bullet didn't seek flesh. It was a message. It shrieked past Stern's head with less than an inch to spare and slammed into the heavy iron girder behind him. A shower of rust and frozen paint chips exploded into the Party agent's face.
The effect was instantaneous. Stern, reacting with the pure survival instinct of a seasoned operative, dove for the gritty planks of the bridge, rolling behind a low stone balustrade for cover. The shot had not been an attack. It was a command, spoken in the universal language of violence: Stay down. Stay out of this.
With the Party momentarily neutralized, the tactical geometry of the bridge simplified. Koba pivoted, the world snapping back into sharp, violent focus. The firefight was a chaotic ballet of desperation. The Okhrana agents, their commander dead, were firing wildly from the cover of the Russian customs house. Pavel, a solid, unmoving rock, was returning fire with methodical precision, each shot from his heavy revolver a deliberate, calculated punctuation mark in the chaos.
Koba knew the Germans' only real priority was not him, and certainly not Kato. It was the asset.
"Malinovsky!" he roared, the command in German, sharp and clear above the din. "Get Malinovsky!"
The two German agents, who had been cautiously taking cover, understood immediately. This was their mission objective. One of them laid down a burst of suppressing fire from his semi-automatic pistol, forcing the Russians to duck, while the other dashed forward. He grabbed the still-hooded and whimpering traitor, who had fallen to the ground in the initial chaos, and began dragging him back towards the German end of the bridge like a sack of stolen goods.
This was their chance. Koba grabbed Kato's hand, his grip a brutal, unfeeling vise. "Come on!" he yelled, pulling her into a run. He and Pavel moved with the grim efficiency of men who had done this before, firing as they fell back, their shots aimed not to kill but to keep heads down. The firefight provided the perfect, violent cover for their retreat. The Okhrana, their primary target (the colonel) dead and their secondary target (the compromised Malinovsky) lost, had no reason to press the attack. Their fire dwindled as Koba's group reached the relative safety of the German side.
They made it. Adrenaline, tasting of copper and ice, pounded in Koba's veins. He saw Pavel, his face grim, reloading his revolver. He saw Kato, her eyes wide with terror and confusion, her hand still locked in his. He saw the German agents securing their prize. They had survived.
But they were not greeted as heroes. The moment they stepped off the bridge and onto the cobblestones of the German checkpoint, they were surrounded. A dozen German soldiers, who had been held in reserve, materialized from the buildings, their Mauser rifles leveled, the sound of their bolts chambering rounds a final, menacing chorus of clicks. They were no longer allies. They were prisoners.
Through the ranks of the soldiers, a path cleared. Oberst Walter Nicolai walked forward, his face a mask of cold, controlled fury. He was not wearing his civilian suit now, but the immaculate feldgrau uniform of a German General Staff officer, his boots polished to a mirror shine despite the slush and snow. He looked at the chaos on the bridge, the dead Okhrana colonel, the retreating Russians. Then his cold, analytical eyes settled on Koba.
"Who was that man?" Nicolai demanded, his voice low and dangerous, cutting through the aftermath of the firefight. He was referring to Stern. "He shouted your name. He carried a Russian weapon. Another one of your Bolshevik comrades, come to join the party?" His eyes narrowed. "Or was this an internal squabble? A betrayal within a betrayal? Were you attempting to play us against your own people, Herr Schmidt?"
The accusation hung in the frozen air, lethal and sharp as an icicle. Nicolai, the master of the game, believed he was being played. He thought Koba might have been setting him up, using German resources to settle a revolutionary feud, an act that would have been a catastrophic diplomatic incident.
Koba was exhausted. His arm was a universe of fire. His mind was frayed from the impossible series of choices he had just been forced to make. And now, he was surrounded, his life hanging on the thread of this one man's suspicion. He had Kato, but he had lost everything else. He was a man without a party, without a country, and now, without an ally.
He met Nicolai's gaze. His mind, the cold, calculating machine that was Koba, raced through the possibilities, searching for the one lie, the one narrative, that could save them. He had to give the Oberst a story he wanted to believe, a story that would transform him from a liability back into an asset.
"That man," Koba said, his voice raw but steady, forcing the words out through sheer will. "Was from a rival faction within our movement. Lenin's faction."
He saw a flicker of recognition in Nicolai's eyes. German intelligence had files on them all.
"They are sentimental fools," Koba continued, building the lie, brick by painful brick. "Internationalists who still cling to the fantasy that a war between Germany and Russia can be avoided. They believe in the brotherhood of the proletariat. They found out about our arrangement and sent their best man to stop it. To stop me."
He took a deep breath, preparing for the final, desperate gambit, the one that would sever his past forever and define his future. He looked from Nicolai's suspicious face to the grand, strategic expanse of the Russian border behind him.
"They are idealists who live in a world of books and theories," he said, his voice ringing with a newfound, chilling conviction. "You and I, Oberst, are pragmatists. We live in the real world. We know the war is not only coming; it is necessary. And when it does, your armies will need more than just rifles and cannons to defeat the Tsar. You are going to need men like me. Men on the inside. Men who can turn a factory strike into a riot, a bread shortage into an uprising, a mutiny into a full-blown revolution."
He had burned his last bridge. He was no longer just offering a single agent. He was offering himself, his skills, his entire ruthless worldview, to the German war machine, not just as an asset, but as the future leader of a pro-German fifth column inside the Russian revolutionary movement. He was trading his soul for his life.