The walk back to the teahouse was silent and brutal. Pavel half-dragged, half-carried Luka through the narrow alleys, the young man's breath hissing through clenched teeth. Every step sent a fresh stab of pain through his shattered leg. He didn't scream, but soft, broken sounds escaped him anyway. The bolt cutters—their prize—swung in Pavel's hand like an anchor, a reminder of what the victory had cost.
They slipped through the back door. Warm air hit them, thick with spice and tobacco. Timur's men lounged on cushions, muttering over tea and cards—until the door creaked. Every head turned. Luka was pale as chalk, his leg bent at an angle that made stomachs twist. Pavel's face was carved from stone.
Koba appeared. His eyes went first to the bolt cutters. He took them, weighing the steel, testing the hinge with slow precision. The tool worked. That was all that mattered.
Only then did he look at Luka.
The boy slumped against the wall, face slick with sweat. Koba's stare held no pity. Jake Vance—the man who would have knelt beside him—was gone. What remained saw only a liability. An injured man was weakness. Weakness meant risk. And risk could not be allowed.
"Take him to the cellar," Koba said, voice flat, mechanical.
Timur stepped forward. Koba's eyes did not leave Luka.
"Give him vodka for the pain. Nothing else. No doctor. No one leaves that room until we are gone."
The meaning landed like a blow. Luka was not being treated. He was being contained.
Timur signaled his men. They lifted Luka. The motion tore a cry from his throat, sharp and raw. His head lolled as he muttered fragments—half-delirious, half-coherent.
"So dark… iron everywhere… guards talking in the yard…"
Pavel raised a hand. "Wait."
He crouched beside him. "Luka. What did you hear?"
The boy's voice came in ragged scraps. "Police… complaining… cold rations… cousins in the port… lucky ones… easy money…"
He gasped, then whispered the line that froze the room.
"Okhrana men. Special duty. At the naval port. Watching the river. For ghosts."
Silence followed. To most, meaningless. To Pavel, a spark. To Koba, a thunderclap.
Pavel rose. "Planner. You need to hear this."
He repeated Luka's words exactly. Okhrana men. Special duty. Naval port. Watching the river. For ghosts.
Koba's expression didn't change, but inside the alarms were deafening.
Every piece fit too neatly.
Special duty meant a setup.
Okhrana men meant Stolypin's hand.
Naval port meant the heist site.
Watching the river meant the escape route.
And ghosts—that meant him.
He turned to the map. The web of arrows and routes he had crafted with such precision now looked grotesque. A painting of his own execution.
The five-minute patrol gap. The unguarded waterfront. The silent river approach. None of it was discovered intelligence.
It had been placed there for him to find.
Stolypin hadn't hunted him. He had predicted him.
The trap had been waiting since the first move.
Koba stared at the map until the ink blurred. Anya stepped beside him, her face pale. She saw it too. What they had built wasn't a plan.
It was a coffin.
Forty-eight hours left. His masterpiece lay in ruins.
The teahouse suffocated. The air stank of apple tobacco and fear. Timur's men, so bold hours earlier, now sat like wolves that had smelled a larger predator. They sensed the trap. They sensed death.
Koba did not rage or panic. He had retreated inward, into that cold, airless chamber where his mind went when logic failed. He replayed every detail. Every piece. Somewhere, the wrong variable had slipped in. One mistake. One lie.
He had believed in the data—patrol randomness, shift gaps, perfect timing. Too perfect. The illusion of weakness. Bait.
For the first time since Jake Vance had died and Koba was born, he had no solution.
Then Anya moved.
She stood abruptly, her chair scraping against the floor. Her eyes were not frightened—they were furious. Controlled, disciplined fury.
"This isn't failure," she said. Her voice sliced the room open. "It's information. The most valuable kind."
She stepped beside him at the map. Koba didn't look, but she knew he was listening.
"He didn't react to you," she said. "He anticipated you. We thought we were hunting. But he's been steering us from the beginning."
Her finger tapped the river entrance.
"He knew you'd target this. It's the obvious weak point. Any strategist would choose it. So he built the illusion. He pulled men from the other sectors, left the door open. On purpose."
She deconstructed Stolypin's thinking piece by piece—mirroring Koba's own method, forcing his stalled mind to grind back into motion.
"Stolypin's been playing chess," she said. "Rykov, the manhunt, the patrol patterns—sacrifices to funnel your king into the killing ground." She pointed at the port. "The question isn't how he trapped us. It's what his next move is. He's waiting. So what's the counter?"
Her words hit him like a jolt to the spine. His eyes focused again. The fog lifted.
Stolypin expected Koba to collapse.
Instead, the general returned.
"You're right," Koba said. His voice cracked slightly, then steadied, cold and sharp. "He expects a scalpel."
He turned to Timur. To the hulking brute and his restless men. To the map of the port that had almost become their grave.
"We'll give him a bomb."
The air shifted. Despair did not disappear—it hardened into resolve.
Timur straightened. "What do you need?"
Koba's smile was thin and lethal. "I need your men to be more than fighters." He paused. "I need them to be martyrs."
He grabbed a fistful of charcoal and smeared it across the map, erasing hours of elegant planning.
"This," he said, "is dead."
He tapped the warehouses near the docks—dense, flammable, crowded.
"We're done sneaking. Stolypin expects quiet. We'll give him thunder." He looked at each man in turn. "We're going to start a war at the St. Petersburg docks."
The plan was madness—violent, suicidal, impossible.
But it was movement.
The general was back.
And one by one, knowing they were walking into the jaws of death, they followed him.