Stolypin's request was a trap with no clean escape — too direct to refuse, too intricate to fabricate. Jake paced the narrow length of his London room like a caged animal, fingers twitching as if trying to rearrange the air into a solution. Stolypin wanted the written record of a secret tribunal that had never existed. A real trial wasn't just a document; it was a machine. Names, charges, exhibits, verdicts. One misstep, one invented witness living in the wrong city, and the lie would collapse.
He considered claiming the records were destroyed. Too timid. It would look like an excuse.
He thought about using obscure comrades as participants. Too risky. Stolypin's agents might actually find one.
No — the lie had to be bold. It had to sit close enough to truth that even a skeptic would see reflection instead of invention. He would use real men, real tensions, real factions. The tribunal would be fiction built from the bones of reality.
He found Stepan Shaumian in the library of a sympathetic British socialist. The room smelled of damp paper and the kind of ideological zeal that seeped into walls. Shaumian looked up as Jake approached.
"Stepan," Jake said quietly. "There's a matter of party security we must discuss."
Shaumian stiffened. Whenever Soso used that voice, it meant ruthless necessity was on the table.
Jake didn't mention Stolypin. He dressed the crisis in ideological clothing. "Our actions regarding Orlov… and then Luka… were necessary. But they were irregular. Unrecorded. People talk. Someday someone might say we acted from impulse, not discipline."
Discipline — the word struck home. Shaumian believed structure was the embryo of the future state. Unanchored decisions disturbed him.
"A formal record," Shaumian murmured. "Yes. We need one."
Jake hid his relief. "I've started a draft. I need your help to give it proper form."
For two hours, the revolutionary and the forger built history out of smoke. Jake provided the "facts"; Shaumian gave them bureaucratic flesh. Together they wrote The Secret Tribunal on the Case of the Menshevik Agent Luka Mikeladze.
Judges: Stalin of the Security Committee, Kamo of the Combat Organization, Shaumian of the Central Committee.
Evidence: "Exhibit A, an intercepted Menshevik letter."
"Exhibit B, testimony from a trusted witness."
Timeline, proceedings, verdict, resolution.
It looked official because it bore real signatures. It breathed because Shaumian believed it.
Jake left the library with the forged document inside his coat. The fog outside had thickened, and through it stepped Leon Trotsky, as if conjured by suspicion itself.
"You've been busy, Comrade Stalin," Trotsky said lightly, matching Jake's pace. "Meetings with Krasin, now a long talk with our philosopher. Quite the private congress."
Jake kept walking. "The Party's work doesn't pause for speeches."
"Two fronts," Trotsky mused. "Words and shadows. Must be exhausting."
He wasn't accusing — just reminding Jake that someone was watching. Someone who saw connections.
When they parted, a tremor slid through Jake's chest. He had sealed one breach only to feel another opening. Not from Stolypin. From within.
The lie was holding.
For now.
The final days of the Fifth Party Congress were chaos dressed in ceremony. The long speeches were over; now came the real war — bargaining in corners, whispered deals, ideological duels disguised as procedural votes. Everyone knew what was at stake: Lenin's disciplined vanguard or Martov's broad, doomed democracy.
Every motion was a battlefield. Every tally felt like a bullet. Momentum swung wildly: Lenin up one hour, Martov the next. The future dangled by threads.
And on those threads stood Trotsky.
Brilliant, proud, infuriatingly independent, he was the hinge of the entire Congress. His delegates could gift Lenin victory or hand Martov a reprieve. Trotsky shared Lenin's end goal but detested his methods — and he loathed the "barbaric Georgian" who enforced them.
Lenin tried passion. Martov appealed to principle. But Jake saw what neither titan understood: Trotsky could not be persuaded by debate. His pride was armor. His intellect was a fortress. He had to be moved by something beyond theory.
That night, Jake sent word for a private meeting — neutral ground, a fog-soaked bench by the Thames.
Trotsky arrived with his usual mixture of arrogance and curiosity. "Another clandestine meeting, Comrade Stalin? You do love shadows."
Jake ignored the jab. "You believe in permanent revolution," he said quietly. "You're right."
Trotsky blinked. Agreement was the last thing he expected.
"But ideas alone don't sustain revolutions," Jake continued. "Money does. Real money. The kind that buys presses, weapons, passage across borders. The Party is broke, Leon. Your 'permanent revolution' is a bird with clipped wings."
Trotsky's eyes narrowed. "The will of the proletariat cannot be reduced to accounting."
"Everything can," Jake said coldly. "And we're not broke."
He laid out the truth — or just enough of it. The disciplined, military expropriation his Caucasus committee had carried out. Not as boastful theft, but as strategic necessity.
Then he named the amount.
Trotsky's breath hitched. For a moment, his brilliance faltered into simple human calculation.
"Here's my proposal," Jake said. "Your bloc delivers Lenin the centralized party we need to win. Do that, and I allocate thirty percent of the Tiflis gold to a new Committee for International Revolutionary Work — yours to lead."
A war chest. Trotsky's dream made tangible.
"Refuse," Jake said softly, "and the gold funds only our domestic front. Principles or power."
Trotsky stared at the black water, torn between disdain and desire. Pride battled purpose. Idealism battled reality. Jake could almost hear the gears turning — the cost of purity being tallied against the price of victory.
A long silence settled. The fog thickened.
Jake didn't press him. He didn't have to.
Once a man begins calculating the cost of his ideals, he has already begun to spend them.
And Trotsky was calculating.
The Congress would end soon. Votes would be cast. The future would tilt.
But tonight, in the London fog, Jake had done what revolutionaries and statesmen alike feared most:
He had offered Trotsky everything he wanted —
from the shadows.