The Imperial Merchants Bank did not feel like an office. It felt like a tomb, and Kato Svanidze was its new queen.
She stood in the center of the grand, marble-floored main hall. Sunlight streamed through the high, arched windows, illuminating millions of dust motes dancing in the silent air. Before her stood the assembled clerks and bureaucrats of the Commissariat of Nationalities—the staff she had inherited. They were a motley collection of old, terrified Tsarist functionaries who had kept their jobs through obedience, and new, arrogant Party appointees who believed their loyalty made them untouchable.
Today, they were united by a single, primal emotion: fear.
Kato's eyes, cold and analytical, swept across their faces. She was not just giving a speech. She was hunting. She was looking for the tells. The man in the back whose eyes refused to meet hers. The young woman in the front row whose hands were trembling, clasped tightly behind her back. She had seen Lenin's move in the Council room. She knew, with absolute certainty, that this room was infested with his spies.
"Comrades," she began, her voice not loud, but carrying a sharp, cutting edge that commanded absolute silence. "Your previous Commissar has been called to the front to serve the revolution. I am now in command."
She let the statement hang in the air. "Your previous standards of work are no longer acceptable. My standards are perfection and absolute loyalty. Those of you who meet them will be rewarded. Those of you who do not…" She paused, letting her gaze drift over the crowd. "…will be removed."
She turned and walked toward the former bank director's opulent suite of offices, Pavel falling into step silently behind her. "The head clerk, Petrov. Send him to my office. Now."
The office was a monument to capitalist excess, with a massive mahogany desk and plush leather chairs. Kato ignored it all. She stood by the window, looking down at the street. A moment later, Petrov entered. He was a weaselly man with thinning hair and sweat beading on his upper lip.
"You wished to see me, Comrade Deputy Commissar?" he asked, his voice strained.
"Petrov," Kato said without turning. "I require a complete summary of all active projects in this Commissariat. Territorial disputes, cultural preservation orders, everything. I want it on my desk by noon."
She turned to face him. "You will work on it here. At this small table in the corner. You will not leave this room until it is finished."
Petrov's face went pale. "Here, Comrade? But all my files are in the main hall…"
"Then you will have them brought to you," Kato said, her voice flat. "Begin."
The terrified clerk scurried to the table and began to work. An hour passed in silence, the only sound the frantic scratching of Petrov's pen. Then, Pavel entered the office as silently as a ghost. He walked to Kato's desk and placed a small, crumpled ball of paper on the polished wood.
"I found this in the wastebasket by the head clerk's desk in the main hall," Pavel said, his voice a low rumble. "He tried to discard it before you summoned him."
Kato picked up the note and smoothed it out. The message was short, written in a simple numeric code she had broken in her head before she'd even finished unfolding it.
It read: Target is isolated. Awaiting instructions. A report for a Cheka handler.
Kato walked calmly over to the small table where Petrov was working. The clerk looked up, his face a mask of pure terror. She placed the crumpled note on the desk directly in front of him.
The small, insignificant-looking piece of paper sat on the polished mahogany, an object of immense, terrifying power.
Petrov's face seemed to collapse in on itself. His mouth opened and closed, but no sound came out. He began to stammer, to deny, a torrent of panicked, incoherent words.
Kato held up a single, slender hand. The flow of words stopped instantly.
"Do not lie to me, Petrov," she said, her voice a silken whisper. "It is inefficient. You have one chance, and only one, to be useful. Give me the names of the other Cheka informants on my staff. All of them. Now."
The man broke. A pathetic, whimpering sob escaped his lips. He gave her three more names.
Kato listened, her expression unchanging, and wrote the names down on a clean sheet of paper. Then she looked up at Pavel, who had been standing by the door, a silent angel of death.
"Remove him," she said.
Pavel took Petrov by the arm. The clerk didn't scream or struggle. He was too terrified to make a sound. He was simply led away, a man who had already ceased to exist.
A few minutes later, Kato summoned the three other named informants to her office. They entered as a group, trying to project an image of confidence, of solidarity. They saw her sitting behind the massive desk. They saw the list in her hand. They saw their names written on it.
Their confidence evaporated. The trap closed around them.
But Kato did not threaten them. She did not speak of the Lubyanka's cellars. She made a simple, cold business proposition.
"You have a choice," she said, her voice calm and reasonable. "You can be 'removed,' like your colleague, Comrade Petrov. Or, you can continue your important work for the security of the state."
She paused, letting them absorb the faint glimmer of hope. "But you will no longer report to the Lubyanka. From this moment forward, you will report only to me. You are now my eyes and my ears inside the Cheka."
She had not just purged the spies. She had turned them. She was building a counter-espionage network using the enemy's own agents. Her prison was becoming her web.
The three informants stared at her, their faces a mixture of terror and dawning comprehension. They all nodded, their movements stiff, jerky.
"Good," Kato said, a hint of a smile touching her lips. "Your first report to Comrade Menzhinsky is due this evening. You will tell him that the new Deputy Commissar is a paranoid, demanding fool who trusts no one and spends her days locked in her office, reading old, useless files."
She stood, dismissing them with a wave of her hand.
"You will tell him she is completely isolated. You will tell him she is no threat at all."