The question hung in the cold air of the crypt, a blade pointed at his heart: "What is so important that you would start a civil war over a simple nurse?"
Jake looked at Kato. He saw the woman he thought was dead, the ghost who now held his entire future in her cool, steady hands. He had been playing a game of secrets and lies for so long it was second nature. But looking at her now, at the piercing intelligence in those gray eyes, he knew a lie would be a fatal mistake. He had to give her the truth. The whole, insane, impossible truth.
He took a breath, the cold air burning his lungs. "It was never about the nurse," he said, his voice low in the echoing stone chamber. "It was about her access. To a man named Yakovlev."
Kato's expression didn't change, but her eyes narrowed, processing the name. "The jailer."
"Yes," Jake confirmed. The first part of the confession was out. Now came the leap into the abyss. "I didn't come back to this time to win a revolution, Kato. I came back to stop a murder."
He paused, letting the weight of his next words gather. "A specific one. The murder of the Tsar's family."
He had done it. He had handed her the most dangerous secret in the world. He felt a terrifying, dizzying sense of release, as if a physical weight had been lifted from his chest. For the first time since waking up in this frozen hell, he was no longer alone with the crushing burden of his 21st-century conscience.
Kato did not react with shock or moral judgment. There was no gasp, no look of disbelief. Her mind, a cold engine of pure calculation, simply processed the new data. She began to pace the stone floor, her footsteps silent, a predator assessing a new and unexpected landscape. The single lantern on the floor cast their shadows long and distorted against the ancient tomb walls, making them look like monstrous kings and queens of a forgotten age.
"A sentimental fool," she said at last. Her voice was flat, an observation, not an insult. "You would risk everything—this entire new world—for a dead king and his children."
She stopped pacing and turned to face him. Her eyes, reflecting the lantern light, seemed to gleam with a new, terrifying intensity. "And a genius," she added, her voice a low murmur.
"The Romanovs are not a liability," she continued, her mind moving at lightning speed, seeing angles Jake had never considered. "They are the ultimate asset. With the Tsar alive, you hold the key to negotiating with the Germans, who are his cousins. With the British, who are his wife's family. With the entire world, which still recognizes him as the legitimate ruler of this land."
"It's not about leverage, Kato," Jake said, his voice raw. "It's about doing one thing right in the middle of all this."
"It can be about both," she countered instantly. Her gaze was sharp, pinning him in place. "Your morality gives you the motive. I will provide the strategy."
In that moment, the final barrier between them dissolved. It was replaced not by warmth, not by the grudging affection they'd once shared, but by something far stronger and more dangerous: a perfect, terrifying alignment of purpose. He had the mission. She had the methodology. They were a team again, but this time, stripped of all illusions, they were monsters united.
The heavy stone door to the crypt grated open, the sound echoing through the small chamber. Shliapnikov stood there, his massive frame silhouetted against the dim light from the church above. His face was grim.
"Word has come," he said, his voice heavy. "From my contact at the Smolny. The Council has voted."
Jake's gut tightened. "An arrest warrant?"
"No," Shliapnikov said, and the word held no relief. "They are not arresting you. They have… promoted you. They have named you People's Commissar for the Southern Front. They are sending you to Tsaritsyn to fight the Whites."
Jake heard the words, but it was Kato who processed their true meaning first. "A poisoned crown," she murmured, her eyes gleaming with a kind of cynical admiration. "Brilliant. They are removing you from the board. Sending you to die."
Jake understood. It was an execution order, gift-wrapped in glory and patriotic duty. Lenin was exiling him, sending him to the deadliest, most chaotic front of the war, hoping a White Army bullet would do the political dirty work for him. It was a ruthless, elegant, and almost certainly fatal move.
A slow, dangerous smile spread across Jake's face. It was the first genuine smile he'd felt in months, and it was utterly devoid of humor.
"No," he said, a wild energy sparking in his eyes. "They are not removing me from the board. They are giving me an army. An army they think I will use for them."
Shliapnikov looked at him, bewildered. "You're going to accept this? It's a death sentence!"
"I am going to accept," Jake said, his mind racing, the counter-gambit forming with brilliant, crystalline clarity. "Lenin wants me out of Petrograd? Fine. I'll go. But he is going to pay a price for it he cannot possibly imagine."
He looked at Kato, at her cold, intelligent face, and he saw the final piece of his plan. He was going to turn Lenin's trap back on itself. He was going to hide his most valuable, most dangerous piece in plain sight.
"I will go to Tsaritsyn," he declared. "But I cannot simply abandon my duties here. The work of the Commissariat of Nationalities is too vital." He let the lie hang in the air, savoring the irony.
"I will need to appoint a trusted deputy," he continued, looking directly at Kato, "to run the Commissariat in my absence. Someone with proven administrative experience. Someone with… foreign connections, who can manage the sensitive ethnic issues in the western territories."
His smile widened. "Someone like a certain German comrade who has already proven her unwavering dedication to our revolutionary cause."