The news hit the warm, bread-scented room like a thrown brick.
Stolypin's estate. The enemy's inner sanctum.
Kamo looked stunned. "I don't get it," he muttered, rubbing his face. "Why take them there? To kill them? Quietly, away from the press?"
Jake didn't answer at first. The ashes of Kato's letter still smoldered in the corner, but the man who'd burned it was gone. What remained was the strategist—ice-cold, calculating.
"No," he said finally. "He's not going to kill them. That's what a butcher does. A statesman uses people."
He began pacing. The pieces came together faster than he spoke. "He'll put them on display. Anna, the sons, Pyotr—reunited under his roof. The narrative writes itself. 'The Benevolent Empire Heals a Family Shattered by Bolshevik Terror.'"
Kamo blinked, horrified.
"He'll stand as their savior," Jake continued. "The compassionate father of the nation. The mother and children grateful. The broken husband redeemed. The revolutionaries? Monsters who destroy families."
He stopped. "He's reforging our weapon into his own blade."
Kamo swore. "Then we've lost. He's got them. It's over."
Jake turned, a dangerous half-smile on his lips. "No. He's made a second mistake."
"A mistake?" Kamo snapped. "It looks like checkmate."
Jake leaned in. "First mistake—he underestimated how deep a man's past can cut him. Second—he got arrogant. By taking them to his estate, he's made it personal. He thinks he invited peasants into his home."
A spark ignited behind Jake's eyes.
"He's just invited me inside."
He sat, grabbed paper, and began writing in tight, precise code. "Kamo, this doesn't go through party channels. Use the military lines. Send it through our man in the War Ministry."
Kamo stiffened. "Danilov."
Jake nodded. "Tell him this must be passed directly to the Prime Minister. For Stolypin's eyes only."
Minutes later, the encoded message began its journey through trembling hands. In St. Petersburg, Danilov decoded it in a lavatory stall, sweat slick on his brow, then re-encoded it in Okhrana cipher and pushed it upward.
At dusk, in his private study at Tsarskoye Selo, Stolypin received it. The conversation with Anna Dolidze had gone exactly as he planned—her resolve cracked, her fear redirected, her maternal instincts weaponized.
He was shaping his narrative beautifully.
Then he opened the telegram.
It was not deferential. Not informative. It was a challenge.
You wish to understand the game.
You are speaking to my pawn and my knight.
You should be speaking to the player.
A private meeting. You and I. No guards. No tricks.
Name the time and place.
Let us resolve this matter like statesmen, not street thugs.
— Soso
Stolypin reread it, then smiled—slow, astonished, almost delighted.
"He's magnificent," he murmured. "He's just offered to walk into the lion's den."
Sazonov paled. "It's a trap, Excellency."
"Of course it is," Stolypin said calmly. "The question is—for which of us?"
He folded the telegram with surgical care. After months of shadow-fighting, the ghost had stepped into the light.
The board was cleared. The final match was beginning.
The train crawled north through the empire's frozen veins. Jake sat on a hard wooden bench in third-class, surrounded by coughing peasants and the sour smell of unwashed bodies. He wore the plain clothes of a grain merchant. He looked ordinary. He was anything but.
Every stop felt like a test. Every officer who stepped into the car felt like a hanging judge. And yet beneath the fear, adrenaline surged through him like fire.
He was walking into the lion's den. By choice.
Kamo had tried to stop him, gripping his shoulders hard enough to bruise. "You can't go. It's suicide. He'll have you hanged the moment you step into the city. Let me go instead—"
Jake had cut him off: "You're thinking like a soldier. This isn't a soldier's battle. Stolypin made it personal. I have to see the man behind the moves."
Now, as the train pulled into St. Petersburg under a sky like hammered lead, the city bore down on him. Grand. Controlled. Merciless. A place built on order, not mercy.
He followed the instructions passed through secure channels. No back alley. No safe house. The meeting place was a restaurant.
L'Étoile. Elegant. Quiet. The kind of place where power whispered instead of shouting.
"Monsieur Petrov," the maître d' said with a bow. "Your table is ready."
Jake was led up a narrow staircase into the Sapphire Room—a private chamber with blue silk walls and a table set for two.
Waiting there, calm as a crown, was Pyotr Stolypin.
Taller than expected. Perfectly composed. No guards. No bluster. Just quiet authority wrapped in a tailored suit.
"Monsieur Petrov," he said smoothly. "Or should I call you Soso?"
He gestured to the empty chair. "Please. Sit. I ordered a Bordeaux. I find it assists the gears of history."
Jake sat, mirroring Stolypin's composure. "I prefer Saperavi," he said. "But this will do."
A waiter poured and vanished.
"I must admit," Stolypin said, studying Jake over the rim of his glass, "I've been looking forward to this. Most revolutionaries are blunt instruments. You, however…" He smiled faintly. "You understand theater."
He sipped. "The resurrection of Luka Mikeladze. A masterpiece. Cruel. Precise. Tell me—was madness your aim, or just a fortunate byproduct?"
Jake met his gaze, voice steady. "Madness is the end of any man forced to live inside a lie. You built his lie, Prime Minister. I merely let truth walk in wearing a shawl."
A soft laugh. "Modest. A true craftsman."
They circled each other with words—testing, probing, feinting. Stolypin's intelligence was razor-edged. Jake felt it like voltage across the table: two predators measuring the other's throat.
Finally Stolypin set his glass down. "You know," he said lightly, "I have several dozen guards within a hundred meters. If I wished, you could be tried and hanged by dawn. Your movement would lose its cleverest brain."
Jake drank, unbothered. "And you must know I didn't walk in unarmed. My second-in-command holds a sealed letter. If I don't send word by midnight, it opens. It names governors, police chiefs, factory owners. They die within a week. The Caucasus burns so bright it makes 1905 look like a rehearsal."
He leaned back. "Hang me, and you bury your empire with me."
Silence thickened.
The politeness was gone. They were two forces now—each with a hand on a loaded gun neither could see.
Stolypin studied him for a long, taut moment. Then, slowly, a smile curled across his face—admiration mixed with something darker.
"Excellent," he said softly. "Now we understand each other."
He leaned forward, fingers steepled. "Do you know why I agreed to this meeting? Because you are the first of your kind who understands power. Not ruin. Not chaos. Power. Most of your comrades want to tear down the world."
He paused, voice dropping.
"But you… You want to rule it."
The candlelight flickered between them like a blade.
"So tell me, Soso Jughashvili," Stolypin said, smiling like a man greeting destiny.
"What is it you really want?"