Power was a key, and Kato Svanidze had just been handed a master that opened every door in the Smolny Institute.
She stood in the doorway of her new office. It was the same small, dusty room that had been Koba's political graveyard, a place for an inconvenient hero to be buried under paperwork. A thick layer of dust covered the simple wooden desk and chair. The only decoration on the faded, water-stained walls was a portrait of Karl Marx, hanging slightly crooked.
Kato, dressed not as a nurse but in a severe, practical black dress—the unofficial uniform of a female Party functionary—felt nothing for the title or the office. They were simply tools. She entered the room, her eyes scanning not the shabby furniture, but the angles. The window that overlooked a busy courtyard. The floorboards that might hide a listening device. The thickness of the walls.
She was a spymaster assessing a new safe house, and her every instinct told her it was compromised. She could feel the unseen eyes on her already.
Pavel stood by the door, a silent, hulking shadow, his presence a stark contrast to the bureaucratic setting. Kato gave her first order as Deputy Commissar of Nationalities. It was a simple test of the battlefield.
"Pavel," she said, her voice quiet. "Take this requisition form for heating oil. It is for our office. Deliver it to the supply depot across the river."
She held out the piece of paper. "Walk. Do not take a car. And do not, under any circumstances, look behind you."
Pavel took the form, gave a short, almost imperceptible nod, and left. An hour later, as the weak winter sun began to dip below the rooftops, he returned. He stood before her desk, his face as impassive as granite.
"I was followed," he reported, his voice a flat, emotionless statement of fact. "Two of them. Amateurs. They switched off twice on the bridge, but they used the same newsboy as a spotter both times. They were obvious."
Kato nodded. It was exactly as she had expected. Lenin had been forced to give her a title, but he had placed her in a gilded cage, a fishbowl where her every move would be watched and analyzed. This office wasn't a seat of power. It was a trap.
It was useless to her.
She needed a real base of operations. A fortress. She sat down at the dusty desk, pulled out a fresh sheet of official Commissariat letterhead, and began to write. She would use the power Lenin had just given her to forge a new kingdom, right under his nose.
Her pen moved across the page, drafting a new decree.
By the authority of the People's Commissariat of Nationalities, and for the urgent purpose of housing and protecting sensitive cultural archives from the minority regions, the former Imperial Merchants Bank building on Nevsky Prospekt is hereby requisitioned for immediate state use.
A flicker of grim, cold satisfaction touched her lips. The bank was a fortress of granite and steel in the center of the city. It had reinforced walls. It had limited, defensible entry points. Most importantly, it had a main vault, a steel box buried deep beneath the earth, impenetrable to bullets and to ears.
She was using Lenin's own crushing bureaucracy to build her secret empire.
She blotted the ink and stamped the document with her new, official seal. She handed it to Pavel, along with a second, handwritten note.
"First, deliver this decree to the Commandant of the Smolny Guard. Then, use the men Anatoly left for us. Under the cover of darkness tonight, you will move Professor Ipatieff from the dacha. His new laboratory will be the main vault of the Merchants Bank. His work on the 'special chemical project' must continue, now under the full, official protection of the Soviet state."
Pavel took the papers and disappeared. Kato was alone again, the silence of the office pressing in on her.
Koba was leaving for Tsaritsyn on a military train in the morning. All official communication channels between them—telegrams, military couriers—would be monitored by the Cheka. She needed to establish a secure, private line of communication. She needed to ensure her most valuable, most unpredictable asset remained under her influence, even a thousand miles away.
That night, in a darkened, frozen alley behind the Smolny, the Finn materialized from the shadows. He had been summoned by a secret signal passed through his network of urchins. He looked nervous, his eyes darting around. He was terrified of the woman who had once been his client and was now a powerful, untouchable Commissar.
"You have done well," Kato said, her voice a cold whisper in the darkness. "You will continue to work for me. You will be my only courier to the Southern Front. You will report to no one but me."
She held out a thick, sealed oilskin pouch. It was heavy. "This is for Commissar Koba. You will leave on the morning train. Find a way to get into the military section. Give this to him, and him alone."
The pouch contained a coded personal message, a system for their future communications. But it also held something far more valuable. It was a thick file of intelligence reports, maps, and personnel assessments on the White Army command structure around Tsaritsyn—their logistical weaknesses, the rivalries between their generals, the names of officers who might be turned. It was the crown jewel of the German intelligence network she had captured from Major Richter.
She had just made herself indispensable not just to Koba's political survival in Petrograd, but to his military victory on the front.
"There is a verbal message as well," Kato told the Finn, her face a pale mask in the gloom.
"Tell him his new army is disorganized, demoralized, and walking into a slaughterhouse. Tell him the White Generals are professionals, and they are preparing a trap."
She looked toward the distant lights of the train station, where the fate of the revolution was about to be decided.
"Then tell him this file is the way out."